


Locke: The Best Man in England

by wysiwygot



Category: Locke (2013)
Genre: Accents, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Babies, Cheating, Daddy Issues, Dogs, Domestic smut, Extramarital Affairs, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Gen, Infidelity, Midlife Crises, Mommy Issues, Recovery, Rough Sex, Suicidal Thoughts, Surfing, Tightly Wrapped Packages, Tom Hardy - Freeform, Unplanned Pregnancy, Verbal Abuse, Vomiting, Wales, toxic masculinity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-04-27 15:20:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 62,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14428389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wysiwygot/pseuds/wysiwygot
Summary: Construction manager Ivan Locke only cheated on his wife once—just once in 15 years—but the difference between once and never is everything.Starring:Tom Hardy as Ivan LockeOlivia Colman as Bethan MaguireRuth Wilson as Katrina Locke





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Come for the smut, stay for the suburban malaise? 
> 
> CONTENT NOTE: THIS STORY IS NOT FOR CHILDREN. THIS IS SOME GROWN-ASS ADULT SHIT HERE.
> 
> Author note: Prepare to suffer.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This first chapter is from the POV of the "other woman," Bethan Maguire (played by Olivia Colman), Ivan Locke's assistant on a construction job far from his home in Birmingham with his wife (Katrina) and their sons.

BETHAN

 

Bethan Maguire had no actual designs on Ivan Locke over her three months of working with him. She’d had a few passing moments of attraction to him, fine; he was a good-looking man in a position of authority and skill. His brand of magnetism was, as with all strong magnets, attractive at some times and repulsive at others, depending on where the observer might be standing. There were so many reasons why a crush on Ivan was a terrible idea, however, so she hadn’t entertained it.

Firstly, Ivan was her direct supervisor on the job in Croydon. She’d been assigned to him because he wasn’t able to book his usual assistant down from Birmingham for the whole three-month build. For her part, she wanted to get out of the office. Her desk job was killing her. She was desperate to get more field work under her belt, after ten full years as a secretary at the construction company. Her company, partnered with the firm that Ivan worked for, finally relented, probably because no one else wanted to stay onsite for any stretch of time. So, there she was, on assignment in Croydon: one woman in a giant crew of men. Their part in the project had culminated in a huge cement pour, which had gone according to their fastidious plans. Everything went off without a hitch. Bethan was relieved and felt optimistic for the first time in ages. Her boss, Ivan, didn’t seem particularly relieved, mostly because he’d never seemed worried. He knew what he was doing and he undoubtedly knew it would get done.

Second, Ivan was not particularly her type. Bethan’s types were tall, dark, and clever men who shared her love of the arts, especially theater. Men who knew what “prix fixe” meant, who appreciated great literature and French films. It had been a while since she’d met anyone like that, however—in her peer group, anyone like that was either married or gay or both—and anyway, she’d all but given up on dating. Her life as a spinster was … fine. It was! She had everything just how she liked it: her home, her projects, her lovely garden. She was lacking nothing, really.

Especially not an infatuation on a fussy, small-statured, stocky bloke like Ivan Locke. He was excruciatingly normal, she thought: football, video games, dusty work boots, not much of a sense of humor. Very regimented. Detached, even. He had fine features, though—there was no denying that he was quite good-looking, especially compared to the rest of the workmen. He was meticulous and intense at work, all business, never asking anyone’s opinions. He’d barely even looked at Bethan, as well, which was no surprise. It was something that Bethan had already noticed, starting in her mid-30s: Women her age, 43 at the time of her job with Ivan, were effectively invisible to men. Even construction workers. Go figure.

Third, Ivan was very married. She’d heard him speaking to his family on the phone many times over the Croydon job. Plus, he went up to Birmingham every weekend to be with them. Even if she hadn’t seen his wedding ring, everything about him just reeked of domesticated husband. He wasn’t particularly patient with the crew, but he did carry with him a sort of measured control, almost like he’d learned it, practiced it, even studied it. He was trained, groomed to be someone’s husband, someone’s father. Bethan thought it was rather nice, actually, that he was so quick to retire to his guest house for most week nights, even when the rest of the away crew was guffawing over meat and sides at the nearest pub. She respected that about him.

The final night of the project, however, everyone managed to convince Ivan to join them—the away crew and local workers alike—for dinner and a pitcher or two of beer to celebrate the job well done. The block went down better than she could have ever hoped and she’d done her part. Everyone had. 

The Portuguese lads were gleefully singing some folk song from the Azores, already having tossed back a few drinks. Those same men presented her with a bottle of wine, as well as Ivan with his own. He pretended to look sternly at the men and shook his head theatrically. The men must have noticed he didn’t really drink, so they laughed at his staged offense. Bethan chortled, too. Ivan Locke was making a joke! Perhaps his first ever? There was a similarly faux dramatic outcry from the rest of the table when he went to set the bottle back down on the table, however—so, sighing dramatically, he opened it. Ivan then offered it to the table but everyone declined. Most of them preferred beer, it seemed.

But not Bethan, no. She preferred wine, at home or away, and although she already had a bottle of her own to take with her, she thought it wouldn’t hurt anyone if she sampled a bit of Ivan’s variety.

“Aw, I’ll take some, then. Pass it over,” she remembers saying, holding up her wine glass.

“Yes, excellent, Bethan,” Ivan, seemingly relieved, smiled at her without showing his teeth. He looked like a little boy when he grinned that way. Younger. Mischievous. “Knew I could count on you.”

Over dinner—a raucous affair with a lot of plate-passing and too many dirty jokes to remember—Ivan, sitting just next to her, confided that he didn’t drink much wine and could only just recently discern a white from a red. Another joke, Bethan marveled. Maybe not a great sense of humor, but it was at least the semblance of one.

He’d split his bottle with her and was a couple of glasses in, only two or three, but she could see that it was affecting him. He looked a little flushed, pink-cheeked, and he’d taken his cable-knit jumper off and loosened the first two buttons of his dress shirt. Bethan suddenly noticed things she hadn’t really seen in three months of working with him: a few scattered freckles, a delightfully wonky front tooth, a scar in his eyebrow, lovely full lips, and, mysteriously, a couple of necklaces under his white tee, right against his skin. He didn’t seem like the jewelry type, so she was fascinated.

“Do you not take alcohol much, then?” Bethan asked him pleasantly. She’d feel a bit guilty that the lads and she had pressured him into opening his wine, if that were the case. She certainly hadn’t seen him drinking for the previous several weeks, especially as he declined the majority of the group dinners they’d all enjoyed. But she didn’t know if he might be completely dry.

“No, nothing like that,” Ivan denied, shaking his head and taking another sip of wine as if to prove it. “I like a lager or two on the weekend. I’m just …” he chuckled to himself and ducked his head down conspiratorially to whisper to her, “I’m a bit of a lightweight, to tell you the truth.”

Aw, poor duckling, Bethan thought, smiling at him. He looked so gruff all the time, such a serious bloke, yet here he was, giggly and boyish, after just a bit of wine.

“I see that,” Bethan cheersed him, giving him a wink to show him that she was in on his secret. Shit. That wasn’t flirting, was it? It wasn’t a sexy wink. It was a—

“And, to be honest,” Ivan continued, pouring out the last of the first bottle into Bethan’s glass, “wine makes me a little … randy.”

That’s the word he used: randy. Bethan’s eyes widened and before she could stop herself, she laughed out loud: a full-throated, full-bellied, full-bodied laugh. Her outburst mixed into the many other laughs and voices around them, so it wasn’t liable to draw anyone’s attention. Not like Ivan’s admission had attracted Bethan.

Right after he said it, Ivan’s eyes screwed shut entirely, and he looked dejectedly down at his lap as Bethan laughed. When he looked back up, he was contrite. “Oh, Jesus, Bethan, I’m sorry. That was extremely inappropriate for me to say. I just … it’s the wine! See? It also turns me into a bloody idiot.”

Bethan’s laugh settled down and she shook her head at him, patting his arm, “Psssh. Shush, you. It happens to everyone. The randiness, the loose lips: that’s what wine is for! No harm done. I’m unscathed.”

He looked at her sheepishly and mumbled, “You are such a gem. Ah, I should excuse myself. I’ve just been having such a good time, but I’ve stayed too long. I should go. Shouldn’t I? I should.” He seemed to debate it aloud while Bethan tried to keep up, nodding or shaking her head variously. 

Ivan looked truly on the fence as to what to do, so Bethan gently place her hand on his and said, “Let’s go, then. Walk it off a bit?” 

“Together…?” Ivan asked, confused and reticent.

She patted his arm like a benevolent auntie. He was probably just four or five years younger than she, but she felt strangely protective over him in this state. Bethan explained, “I’ll walk to you to your guest house. I’m fine. Besides, I don’t want to stay here with all these boys.”

Ivan was clearly drunk because he immediately argued, “These boys? Harmless. They think you’re one of them. But you’re not, are you? You’re a good girl. Uh, lady. You’re a sweet woman. And a very good assistant.”

Outside, once they’d started walking, she pressed him on that last point. She was so curious, she might as well take advantage of his lowered inhibitions. She nudged him a bit: “I was a good assistant to you, then? I hope so. I’d like for this to turn into something more.”

“Something more?” he snorted, not quite stumbling, but definitely more swervy than he had been walking into the pub. He’d asked with a leading tone … as if she meant something “more” between the two of them?

Oh, for crying out loud, she realized. Ivan Locke was _flirting._ With _her_. That wine. God, he wasn’t kidding, was he?

Bethan rolled her eyes, correcting him, “Yes, Ivan. More _on-site work_. I want to be a construction manager, like you are.”

He looked embarrassed but confirmed, “Oh. I see. Like I am. Of course.”

“Yes,” she nodded, laughing and steadying him with one arm while hoisting her tote bag with the other bottle of wine to her opposite shoulder. “Yes, drunky. Like you.”

“Learn from the best!” Ivan trumpeted. Then, second-guessing his drunk bravado, he asked, “I’m the … was I a shit supervisor? I hope I was kind to you. I try to be a good one.”

“You were lovely,” she assured him. And he was. However, he was absolutely shit at holding his alcohol. Bethan was surprised to find it sort of cute. Endearing?

“Does wine make you …” Ivan started, gesturing vaguely at his abdomen.

“Nauseated?” Bethan guessed, somewhat flippantly. What? Sometimes it did.

Ivan shook his head and zipped his lips tightly together. It wasn’t what he meant, clearly, but Bethan decided not to ask for details. They walked a bit further in silence and were suddenly outside Ivan’s guest house.

She blurted out her brutally honest truth: “If you must know, wine makes me very happy. Then it makes me sincere, and then—usually very abruptly—it makes me very sad. Or sometimes sleepy. If I’m lucky, wine makes me sleepy before it turns on me and makes me sad.”

Ivan fumbled with his borrowed keys and opened the door to the guest house. There was a moment, just when he turned to look at Bethan, in which she almost panicked. He wasn’t sobered up after their short walk but his demeanor had changed slightly. He seemed to understand how drink could turn on a person.

“Well,” he announced, with a deep frown, “in that case, if you are not yet sleepy, I propose that you come in for a nightcap, we open that second bottle, and see what happens.”

“See what happens?” She raised her eyebrows doubtfully at Ivan. “What do you mean?”

Ivan shook his head at her and smirked as if he hadn’t been purposely vague, as if he didn’t know of the many ways to take that statement. “I mean,” he intoned evenly, leaning closer to her, his voice was a slow, soft lilt, “Let’s see if we can get it to make you sleepy instead of sad.”

“Oh,” Bethan replied, swallowing hard. She felt quite shy, being looked at by him, even though she felt sure he meant nothing by it. He was her boss, he was married, he was not a particularly good flirt, and also he was liable to pass out after the next glass. So, why not?

“All right, then. Let’s see what happens.”

* * *

What happened was that Ivan and Bethan drank the second bottle of wine and didn’t get sleepy. Nor sad. They sat on the couch of his cold, damp guest house, drinking the spare bottle of wine and talking about nothing much at all: the characters they’d worked with over the years, places they’d lived, the buildings they’d known. His guest house was freezing, so Ivan cranked up the electric heater as much as it would go, pointing it straight at them to ward off the chill. He laughed about how he’d been sleeping in his wooly jumper, it was so cold.

After a while, they warmed up. In fact, Ivan had already taken off his sweater and unbuttoned his collared shirt, then he doffed his shoes and socks to cheekily warm his pale feet in front of the dry, hot air from the heater. Bethan giggled at how relaxed and comfortable he seemed after his wine. She was feeling a bit of a buzz, herself, but nothing like Ivan.

When he stripped down to just a white T-shirt, she was shocked to see that not only did he wear necklaces, he also had several tattoos, each one more poorly rendered and worse thought-out than the next. Was that a … fighting leprechaun on his bicep? And also, how had she not noticed what nicely muscled arms Ivan had until then? Is it because he seemed to live in a jumper and a high-vis jacket?

She looked away from his arms before she had a chance to ask about the jewelry or the tattoos, neither question being particularly appropriate. Maybe it was the wine, but Bethan was starting to feel a bit flush. Plus, some concessions to comfort were in order, as she was feeling fairly relaxed herself, so she slid her own feet out of the pumps she’d been wearing all day and rested her stockinged feet on the coffee table next to Ivan’s.

“I don’t know how you lot wear those,” he said, gesturing with his tumbler of wine at her toes flexing and stretching from within the confines of her tights. Bethan noticed then that his soft Welsh accent became less and less refined, the more he drank. 

“Oh, they’re awful,” Bethan agreed. “Too much when it’s warm and not enough when it’s cold. And then, add in the heels …”

Ivan abruptly lurched forward and put his hands on her feet, pulling them toward him until they were on his lap and Bethan was turned on the couch. 

She yelped when his hands made contact, she was so taken surprised. This was perhaps too comfortable, too relaxed. Bethan tried to pull her feet back in the hopes to hide them under her dress hem, but he held her firmly by the ankles. She could hear the calluses on his hands rasping against the nylon fabric.

“What are you—” Bethan gaped at him. 

He looked at her bemusedly, and answered, “Mm, giving you a foot massage.”

Bethan was mortified, and squeaked out an embarrassed laugh at the turn this had taken. “Oh no! No, Ivan, that’s not necessary. Please don’t.”

Ivan looked hurt, frowning through his well-trimmed beard. Stage hurt, though, not truly wounded. He pressed his thumbs into the arches of her feet and looked over at her in disbelief. “You don’t want me to rub your feet? Why not? You ticklish or something?” 

The tone of his question was so sweet and silly that Bethan felt herself soften a little. She looked at him, unsure and hesitant, but didn’t withdraw her feet from his grasp. It had been so long since someone had done something to make her feel good. Even something so small as a massage or a warm embrace. Perhaps the wine had taken the edges down a bit more than she’d thought.

“Ivan,” she started. He began to knead the bottoms of her arches with his strong, sure thumbs, moving like he’d done this a million times before. Which, Bethan realized, he probably had. She sat back against the couch and wiggled her toes a little. “Are you sure? You don’t have to.”

Ivan didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on her feet as he manipulated her tired soles. Bethan took the opportunity to look at his tattoos. She could see multiples on his upper arms and, through the thin cotton of his T-shirt, some shadows on his back, too. She would have never guessed. Tattoos! Under those sweaters and shirts, Ivan Locke had tattoos! And necklaces. What an enigma he was turning out to be. And a fairly competent masseuse, as well.

Gearing up to ask him about his necklaces, Bethan was interrupted by Ivan mumbling something about not being able to properly do his best. She was prepared to argue the contrary—that whatever he was doing was fine work—when he abruptly stuck his thumbnail into a small span of nylon and ripped open the toe of her tights.

“Ivan! Jesus!” Bethan protested, sitting up straight to swat at his hands. What was he doing? 

“Sit. Back. Relax,” Ivan directed firmly, giving a surprisingly dark look in her direction as he tore a hole in the fabric of the toe of her other foot. Her toes were free but her feet were still firmly in his grasp. Neither of them were laughing now.

He maintained eye contact with her for an uncomfortably long time before she relented and sat back against the cushions at the arm of the sofa. She knew that look. It had been quite a while, but she knew that look. She took a deep breath, let it out, and pushed away every bad or cynical thought in her head. All that was left, once the dust cleared, was that she wanted him.

It was done. The decision had been made. There was no turning back.

Ivan seemed very pleased with himself as he further tore at her tights until Bethan’s feet and ankles were completely exposed. His hands kept moving over her skin, massaging and stroking every curve and crevice, even up onto her lower calves. He finally murmured, “Has anyone ever told you that you have superb feet?”

Bethan, relaxing despite her better judgment, moaned appreciatively. “Mmmm, a long time ago now,” she replied quietly.

“How long?” Ivan said, rotating her whole foot at the ankle with one hand while pinching the knots out of her heel with the other.

“Uh …” Bethan started reluctantly, scooting a bit further down on the couch so he could get better access to both feet. “I’d rather not say. It’s embarrassing.”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, I’m sure,” Ivan said reassuringly. His tone was direct now, his focus seemed to come back from whatever holiday that wine had sent it on. “How long? Tell me.”

“Since someone has complimented my feet?”

“Since you’ve been with a man,” he said flatly. He wasn’t pulling his punches, was he? Bethan noticed that he’d continued making small circles with her foot, although he’d stopped rubbing her heel. At the bottom of the circle, her foot was firmly and, she realized, intentionally grazing the front of his trousers.

Her heart in her throat, Bethan answered him, “Ivan … it’s … please don’t make me say this. _So_ long.” She thought for a moment and sighed, “Um … eight years.”

Ivan’s full lips pressed together, framed by his ginger-tinged beard, as he nodded at her briefly. He clarified, “Since anyone has made love to you. Eight years.”

Bethan demurred, ashamed, but becoming more and more aroused by the second. She confirmed, “Yes. Since I’ve been intimate with someone. But, Ivan—”

He interrupted her with a statement that made her insides clench: “Since you’ve been fucked, Bethan.”

She nodded at Ivan, turning crimson, frustrated that he had all the control, yet turned on by that same control. He took both of her feet in his hands then and brazenly rubbed them against himself. She could see that he was also aroused—his erection was pressing against the front of his trousers in a thick bulge that made her breath catch in her throat.

“Say it, then,” he said, his voice seemingly getting throatier as he got harder.

Bethan, engaging some kind of wanton muscle memory, flexed her toes and moved her feet against him of her own accord.

“Since I’ve been … fucked,” she repeated deliberately. Every cell in her body felt like she was being drawn toward him, as if she was caught in his orbit. She felt a little wild, doing this. It had been so long since someone had spoken to her like she was a woman, though, like she was something desired, and it went straight to her head.

Ivan’s look said everything; it was full of savage, thirsty want. All that intensity and it was pointed at her! And waiting for a response. She gave him a small nod and intentionally twisted her foot against his stiffened bulge.

“That’s too long, Bethan,” he concluded, pressing that same foot against himself more firmly.

Then, suddenly, urgently, his strong hands were running up her legs, pulling and pushing at her clothes. Destroying her tights completely in the process, he reached up under her skirt to grab at the waistband of her ruined nylons, jerk them down, strip them off and throw them behind the sofa. Her heart pounding in her chest, she helped as much as she could, eagerly wiggling on the cushions again to aid his removal of her underclothes.

“Please don’t rip my dress,” she fussed, suddenly worried about later, when she’d have to do the walk of shame back to her hotel while wearing a torn dress.

Ivan bodily pulled her hips toward him on the sofa, the muscles in his arms flexing, as he let out a sharp laugh. His accent was decidedly more coarse as he advised, “Take it off, then. Or it will be ripped.”

While she obeyed and pulled her dress over her head, Ivan paused to regard her, unbuckling his belt and undoing his trousers. His eyes traveled over her legs and bared, vulnerable sex, causing her to feel self-conscious all over again. Her embarrassment was somewhat assuaged as he licked his lips while he pulled out his penis. He looked at her like she was delicious, which she certainly did not feel. Bethan looked across her own body, rumpled, sprawled out and unladylike, to see him more fully. Fully erect, Ivan’s cock was sizable in girth if not length. Not an elegant thing by any means, but it suited him and Bethan felt herself aching for it.

Lasciviously, Ivan watched her watch him stroke himself for a moment before he said, “If I am rough with you … is that a problem, Bethan?”

Bethan didn’t know what to say, because she didn’t precisely know what “rough” meant to Ivan, or to anyone. The few lovers she’d had were polite and gentle with her. But they were, again, nothing like Ivan, forceful and intense. Bold. He was taking what he wanted, and that lit a deep, old fire in her.

“Don’t hurt me?” she offered meekly. The statement sounded stupid when it reached her ears and she shook her head at Ivan. She rushed to say, “I mean, no, not a problem but … like I said, it’s been—”

“Eight years,” Ivan finished. “Yes, I know. Enough about that. After tonight, it will not have been long at all.”

When he fell upon her, he was like a tempest. Greedy and urgent, his hands tangled in her curly hair, his beautiful mouth kissing and licking and sucking at hers, then her jaw and her neck. She surrendered completely to Ivan’s control. He wasn’t waiting for her to kiss him back or for further permission, anymore, he just stripped off her remaining underclothes, charmingly careful to not rip anything, until she was naked as sin under him on the couch. She was exposed and self-conscious, quite grateful that the lights were dim and his eyes were no longer looking over her body. His gaze stayed fixed on her face as he pushed his fingers into her wet center, groaning at the state of her.

“Your cunt is fucking soaked, Bethan,” he whispered into her ear, curling his fingers into her while rubbing against her clit with his thumb. He knew his way around the territory, clearly. Bethan tried to push any further thought out of her head. He continued, his voice low and raspy, “You like it when I am rough with you, don’t you?”

Bethan had to admit, she did. She liked how he took what he wanted—in this case, her. She’d never in a million years seen this coming. Ivan Locke! He was … not the person she’d just worked with over the past weeks. This man was vital, intense, passionate. And he was positively working her over with his fingers. The feeling overwhelmed her—so much contact at once—and her hips rolled and jerked under his touch.

After he withdrew his dripping fingers, Ivan raised up to his knees on the seat cushion to push his trousers and boxer briefs down further and expose his own hips and thighs. She got a good look at him then, as he used the wetness from her body to slowly stroke his cock. But then, she realized, he could get a good look at her, too. She was acutely aware of being older than he was—her skin not as taut, her body nothing near flawless. Ivan didn’t seem to be horrified by her, though, as he stripped off his T-shirt and then shoved off his trousers, pulling each of his feet free before coming to rest in that same kneeling position above her.

He was, quite frankly, stunning. Wearing nothing but his watch and necklaces (and his wedding ring, a small voice in Bethan’s mind sang out), Ivan was something to behold. And he was pulling her to him, forcefully, using his strength to pull her legs over his thighs and spread her open before him. She held her breath and abandoned all hope for arranging herself in an aesthetically pleasing way, because then his fingers were penetrating her again.

Ivan quickly, diligently—expertly—got her off with his fingers; a short, fluttering orgasm that crashed through her like a scirocco. Her chest was still heaving when he hiked her hips up even further and bowed over her, forcing his cock all the way into her without warning. Bethan gasped and cried out his name, blurting out something about being careful.

“No,” Ivan replied through gritted teeth above her, his jaw tight and his shoulders straining as he held himself up. He fucked her hard and fast like that, every thrust stretching her open a little more and hitting her a little deeper, every pull making her a little wetter.

“Oh my god-d-d-d-d,” Bethan’s moan was disjointed as she took his deep thrusts, just trying to keep up with his incursion. She was already exhausted and they’d hardly begun. She was so not used to intense physical contact that every movement of his body was seismic against her.

Ivan seemed bolstered and excited by her occasional euphoric outcries, getting stiffer each time. She could feel him inside of her, tense like steel, hard as finished concrete. He changed position whenever and however he wanted, manipulating her body to serve his pleasure in various ways: knees curled up against his stomach, then with her feet against his shoulders, his necklaces banging against her face just long enough for her to see that one was St. Christopher and the other a small crucifix, then her toes in his mouth (a bizarre sensation), and then her legs over his shoulders with him holding her up against him. He was an absolute beast, his face gone red and the tendons in his neck standing out from the exertion of fucking. She’d never been fucked like this: objectivized and used, but also enjoyed, relished. 

Ivan eventually took Bethan with her folded face-down over the arm of the couch, one of his arms heavily planted between her shoulder blades, the other wrapped around her hips so he could pinch and twist her clitoris with his fingers. She had her second orgasm, much stronger than her first and utterly lost herself. Before she’d even stopped panting and groveling—she was still shaking and clinging to the sofa arm for dear life, trapped under the weight of his arm muscling her chest against the cushion—she received another surprise when Ivan smacked her arse twice with an open palm and then abruptly pushed his thumb into her arsehole.

Bethan shrieked in shock and that resulted in Ivan fucking her even harder, shushing her and releasing his hand from her back in favor of knotting his fist into the back of her hair. Her head pulled back firmly, she was now bowed under him as he filled her deeply in ways she’d never been filled. Ivan pistoned into her: hips slapping against her arse, thumb hooking into her, his cock filling her, as his grunts became louder and louder. It was too much! Her cries grew louder, as well, as she became increasingly unsure of how much longer she could withstand Ivan’s onslaught. She found some relief when he let go of her hair, but he immediately used that hand to clap it loudly against her arse again, again and again, each impact sending a stinging shockwave through her whole body.

Amid a filthy stream of consciousness, in which he told Bethan that she was taking all of his cock into her tight cunt like a good girl, she realized at that moment that she’d always wanted to hear that from a man: That she was a good girl. Like this is what her body was for. Pleasure. Finally, a purpose.

His low, gravelly voice was in her ear, telling her how good she spread her legs for him, how good that she could take all of him, when he suddenly grunted, “Oh fuck!”

Ivan’s exclamation turned into a long, low groan as he came, withdrawing his thumb so he might grasp her by Bethan hips with both hands when he finished inside of her. He twitched and dipped, thrusting into her a few more jagged times while he came to a shaking, trembling end.

Slouched over her body, he pulled out and sighed, “Ahhh, fuck. That was … fucking hell. Mmmph.”

They both collapsed, slumping against the sofa, Bethan twisting so Ivan wouldn’t crush her. She could barely catch her breath—neither could—so she just lay in his arms, sweating and gasping. How had she also not noticed how good he smelled?

She was stunned into blissful silence by his dominant and forceful handling of her. Never in a million years did she imagine this would happen. No one had fucked her like that, not ever, and now she’d been fucked by Ivan Locke. Her boss!

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before the endorphins in her body started to retreat and her brain began to come back online. It was as if her mind had taken a breather whole her body took over, but now it was back to introduce all manner of unpleasant thoughts.

_He used you._

_He came in you like you were a whore._

_You let him. You are a whore._

_You’re his whore._

Bethan fought to maintain composure. She already felt quite fragile, lying in his arms—it was always like that after she’d had an orgasm, even by herself, but she’d forgotten that it didn’t go away even if she was with a lover. Ivan, for his part, wasn’t exactly whispering sweet nothings into her ear—his dirty words were still echoing in her mind, at that—but he’d maintained skin contact and was holding her firmly against his chest, so it was enough for her to relax and rest.

She was close enough to see his necklaces again: That St. Christopher medal and crucifix. Those icons suited the principled, focused man she’d just worked with for weeks, but it was a whole other side of him—a dirty-minded, tatted-up Catholic boy from Wales, no less—who had just given her the best orgasm of her life. Ivan Locke was full of surprises.

But instead of feeling sated and happy and well-fucked, Bethan increasingly felt … empty. Sad. He wasn’t focused on her anymore, not like he had been. She’d given it up so quickly. He’d barely worked for it! They barely even kissed, and Bethan absolutely loved kissing.

Also: Ivan was MARRIED. He didn’t make love to her the way a man would make love to his spouse; he fucked her like she was disposable. Like she was a thing. Someone he’d never see again. This wasn’t an expression of love. Or kismet. This probably wasn’t even chemistry but for the wine.

This was, instead, some impulsive moment of weakness to him. He was probably someone who could have sex whenever he pleased with his loving wife. He got an erection while on the road, however, and his trusty old assistant Bethan Maguire was there to catch it with her dusty, forgotten vagina. Or something like that.

To her, though, the sex was a sea change. Immediately after, Bethan wanted more of it, more of Ivan, but she couldn’t have it, could she? Couldn’t have him. He would go home to his Birmingham life with his pretty, (probably) young wife and his beautiful children, and she would go back to Islington and wait to die.

She started to cry. Silently at first, at least as quietly she could manage, but within a few moments of stifling her sobs, her body started to hitch and tremble in Ivan’s arms. He was resting—maybe just moments away from snoring the rest of the night away on the couch, tangled up with Bethan’s limbs—but after she inadvertently emitted a sniffle, he craned his neck back to get a look at her teary face.

His expression quickly moved through several permutations: first confusion, then exasperation, then a softening as he realized what was happening. He jostled her up until he could press his lips against her forehead and give her a cuddle.

“Hey hey hey,” he said, soothingly, his voice a low rumble from his chest. “What’s all this? Has the wine turned on you, after all?”

Bethan nodded tearfully, not bothering to hide her sniffles any longer. Maybe Ivan was right. Maybe this heartache was just wine speaking, spitting terrible untruths about what they’d just done, the mistake they’d just made—if was even that. Maybe she was just an old fuddy-duddy romantic who’d lost her sense of adventure. Maybe she should just lighten up and take things as they come.

Ivan stroked Bethan’s arms, coddling her as she wept softly against his chest. Soberly, he asked, “Was I too rough, Bethan?”

She shook her head emphatically, sniffling, “No! No, nothing like—I don’t know. Ivan, I’m just … sad. I’m sorry. I told you.”

“Yes, you did,” he admitted. He seemed to understand. He nodded, anyway; for Bethan at that moment, it was enough. “But you have nothing to be sorry about. I’m the one who should be sorry,” he insisted. He was tender to her, then, as sweet as he had been rough. “It was too much. I got away from myself.”

Ivan said she deserved more than that and she agreed.

He said he’d make it up to her, in just a few minutes, if she’d only let him. She agreed to that, too.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ivan Locke has landed in London to attend the birth of his child with Bethan Maguire, his former assistant. This chapter takes place directly after the movie.

IVAN

 

All his big losses happened while Ivan was still in his car—one right after the other: job, wife, family, house, boom, boom, boom, boom—en route to attend to Bethan, the woman who was having his child by herself in a London hospital. Bethan, little more than a stranger, asked him to come and he made his decision on the fly. Instead of driving home to Birmingham to watch a football match with his boys and his wife, he turned his car toward London to help a baby come into the world. Ivan turned right instead of left, to set things right.

Ivan had just the clothes on his back when he got to London, as he’d only received the call two hours before explaining that he and Bethan’s little surprise was coming two months early. The call came as he left the site of the biggest job of his long and (until then) respected career as a construction manager. He was possibly the best in all of England and this was was a historic pour. He couldn’t enjoy it. His reckoning had come. In truth, Ivan had felt hollowed out and numb for the months leading up to the drive, his dark night—ever since Bethan had first rung to tell him she was up the duff, that it was most definitely his, that she was going to carry the baby to term, god willing, and that she would raise it herself if she had to.

In those months of feeling reamed out and void, Ivan considered the many ways he might tell Katrina, his wife this news. That his singular but royal fuckup had resulted in a baby. He imagined that she’d perhaps ask him what was on his mind, maybe if he looked worried some evening, or maybe after he’d gone and snapped at her for no discernible reason. She’d be in the middle of putting her long, straight hair up into a messy knot before she put on her face cream at the end of a long day, and she’d say, “Love, you can tell me anything. We’ve been through too much to keep secrets. There’s nothing we couldn’t weather.”

The truth was this: Some months before, after celebrating a massive pour of concrete and a job well done, he had consumed the better part of two bottles of wine, and subsequently spent several hours in the dark with the woman who’d been assigned as to assist him on that away job. He’d gotten carried away and now she was having his baby.

Ivan would tell Katrina that he barely remembered the night at all, or even the woman herself, and that she—Bethan, her name was—meant nothing to him. He’d explain he felt sorry for her, really, as she was older and just so … sad, so melancholic. Like she’d never had a moment’s happiness and felt she wasn’t deserving of it. There was no grand seduction on anyone’s part, but it had happened nonetheless. Just the one night, with absolutely no emotional involvement between them. Definitely nothing he ever anticipated happening and, no, Kat had done nothing to deserve it. He’d made a mistake. That was all.

If she pressed, he’d say of course the sex was absolute rubbish, as it always was when he’d had too much to drink. His wife might nod knowingly at that, because she’d known him intimately for a decade and a half; she’d been through his drinking years and then his years of near sobriety (save for a couple of lagers here and then). Katrina would likely be angry, of course. She was a passionate woman with a sharp tongue. She’d yell and throw things, she’d perhaps cry. But she’d forgive him, eventually. Katrina was, like him, at her core a rational person. She’d see that it was just one mistake. There really _was_ nothing they couldn’t weather. Nothing insurmountable that might cause the foundation of their happy home to crumble beneath their feet, no matter how much it shook them. No woman, no event, no mistake that might jeopardize their cozy little family: Kat and him, the two boys, their dog, the fucking goldfish … whatever.

None of his scenarios mattered, however, because Katrina had called it before he’d even gotten to London. She was done. He wasn’t welcome back home. 

* * * 

Bethan, the woman he’d impregnated during his one slip-up—one slip-up! in fifteen years of marriage!—was focused on the baby from the first moment it was out of her. She was as enamored with their child as Ivan could have ever hoped for her to be. Lucky that it played out that way, as Ivan knew that some women didn’t fare so well. Especially the maudlin ones, as Bethan seemed to be. 

To be fair, he barely even knew _that_ about Bethan. The woman was almost entirely a stranger to him when he drove to London for the birth of their daughter. He knew little of her beyond her being the quiet, depressive assistant he’d stuck his cock in one night when he’d had too much wine. Yet now, there she was, happily taking on her role as a late-in-life first-time mother to young Rosie.

Rosie, too fragile and new to leave, was in the hospital for a full week. Bethan stayed there as long as possible, full three days and nights, to receive support and training on all the things that did not come naturally to a 44-year-old woman having her first child. During that time, Ivan stayed in a spartan hotel room nearby to the hospital so he might get there at a moment’s notice, should Bethan summon him. 

And summon him, she did. Even the morning after the birth, he’d only just found a few precious hours of sleep before his phone rang and the errands began. Between the phlegmy cold that had plagued him all the way from Birmingham and his very long night, he was run ragged before he’d even spied Rosie’s tiny, beet-red face on the other side of a picture window. She was labeled as “Baby” Maguire, the poor girl: Not yet a Rosie, and not even close to being a Locke.

It wasn’t Rosie, though, of course, that had Ivan so ragged. No. Not the babe, nor the sniffles, definitely not the grueling drive that kept him from the biggest pour of his career. How could it be a virus or a trip in the car, trivial as they are, when he’d lost everything he held most dear? He’d had a lifetime, thirty-odd years, of building himself—from the bottom up—into the man he’d wanted to be. The man his father never could be. And it was all undone in a moment, over the speaker phone on his drive to London to meet Rosie.

The first time Ivan held his new daughter in his arms—some time after her birth, in order to make sure he was clear of his cold and was decontaminated as much as possible—he felt a strange sort of vertigo. She was so small and delicate, while he felt so plodding and coarse. Her translucent skin, tiny lashes, wee elfin ears. And she was quiet. Not squalling like Eddie and Sean were as babes. She looked like an actual doll to him, as he gazed down at her, dumbfounded. Bethan stayed at the ready, almost as if she was worried he’d clumsily drop their new baby, but Ivan managed to shut her and the whole world out as he met his daughter. Rosie looked up at him with big glassy eyes that probably couldn’t even make him out just yet.

“Oh, hello,” Ivan said, very softly, just to the baby. She squirmed and fussed a bit in his arms, maybe sensing how long it had been since he’d held a newborn. He added, “Nice to meet you, Rosie. You’re so very little.”

Ivan touched the tip of her miniature nose with a latex-gloved finger, marveling at the soft new skin of her round, red cheeks. When he attempted to hand Rosie back to her mother, Bethan was weeping and waved him off, asking if he might hold her for a couple more minutes.

* * *

Ivan would share none of his many problems with Bethan, who’d had enough to endure. After her emergency caesarian, because of the problem with the umbilical cord, she was nearly flattened with exhaustion. Then, the baby needed focused care and the poor tot wouldn’t latch on, Bethan had a reaction to some ointment the surgeons had used, along with being painfully constipated from the epidural, and, worse of all, she had to suffer Ivan—the cruel man who wouldn’t tell her that he loved her even as she was birthing his baby—fumbling about, trying to set things right.

So, three days in, Bethan was told she’d be able to return home. That she must, actually—she was to be discharged that evening. She’d be permitted to come back to the neonatal care unit in the morning, to spend time with the baby and have her own wellness attended to, but she was no longer able to stay there overnight. 

Bethan, with weary eyes and greasy hair, looked to Ivan, standing there in his work boots and rumpled clothes, and said with bitter exhaustion, “Right. Will you help me get settled back in, then, Ivan? Or do you need to get back to your concrete?”

Her face held no clear expectations of him and he felt like he’d been punched in the gut. Bethan had no idea what he’d lost. He didn’t know what he’d surrendered—for her, for the baby. She thought he was some … day-tripper, set to get back to his real life now that the baby was out. Never to be seen again.

Ivan shook his head and grimaced, replying, “No, no, of course. I’ll come round with the car and help you home. We can get your flat together. For the baby.”

That’s what they did. He picked up Bethan in the car and drove her to her flat. He hadn’t actually seen her for, well, he hadn’t seen her for seven months at that point, and the last time he’d spoken to her at any length before the baby came was five months prior, when she’d called to give him the news. So, their first minutes alone, in his car, were some of the most oddly formal and stilted of his already oddly formal and stilted adult life. 

“Oh,” she said, looking at the floor of the BMW as he helped lower her carefully into the passenger seat. She winced in pain all the way. “All the tissues. Are you still poorly?”

“Ah, no, no,” he grimaced, shaking his head. “Had a touch of runny nose on the drive down, but I’m fine now. Just haven’t tidied up yet.”

Once she was in, he hurried to get back onto his side and seat himself behind the wheel. He’d just fastened his seat belt and started to help with hers when she snapped, “I can manage.” She sniffed and looked around the interior of the car, scraping the tissues aside with her shoe. 

“Well,” she continued, “Can’t have you giving the baby a cold.”

Ivan nodded solemnly in agreement but stayed silent. When Kat had given birth to Eddie, there had been some respiratory trouble in the baby’s early days, and she’d been fiercely protective against the threat of viruses or germs. He’d barely even touched his second son for the first month of the boy’s life, Katrina had been so clucky. He guessed Bethan wouldn’t know that that instinct wasn’t unusual for a woman who’d just had a baby.

* * *

Ivan took in Bethan’s flat, or what he could see of it from the entryway. It was nothing like the house in Birmingham that he’d shared with Kat and the boys, he observed. The house there was full of life and vitality: knickknacks and mementos from family holidays, inherited furniture full of scuffs and dents, the boys’ trainers and sports equipment strewn everywhere, the dog on the furniture and the dog’s fur on every scrap of fabric, the sounds of a Playstation filtering down from Sean’s room. Absolute chaos. And somewhere, in the center of all that lively tangle of living, would be Kat, cleaning or cooking or talking on the phone, maybe all three. She’d welcome him home by chiding him (toothlessly, though) for getting wet concrete on her freshly washed floors or she’d give him a wink if he’d shown up with flowers or takeaway. Even if she was busy chirping about the boys or the news with her half-sister, she’d always take the time to tweak Ivan’s earlobe while she gave him a quick, sweet peck on the lips. And then she’d go back to managing the chaos. 

Bethan’s place was nothing like that. It was tidy. Maybe a bit austere, but it had a garden out back and newly lain bamboo flooring. Her flat was immaculate, the sitting room cold and hard-edged. The interior was so quiet, especially for the city, that he could hear a clock ticking. Her framed art consisted of famous photos of London, Playbills from her travels to New York, one staged portrait—family, presumably—featuring her as a sullen-faced teen sandwiched between two dour-faced adults, a misty soft-focus photo of a windswept castle, and a small oil painting of a rider jumping a white horse over a white fence. There were two chairs at a small round dining table adjacent to a glass coffee table, with art books neatly arranged atop it, in front of a modern sofa with decorative pillows. 

He hadn’t imagined her residence to look like this. Ivan hadn’t imagined it at all, really, but when it crossed his mind on the way over, he imagined it would be shabby, with afghan-topped floral furniture and gilded mirrors, probably filled with cats. The house of a middle-aged, childless singleton. It didn’t dawn on him until he’d escorted Bethan inside that he had no clue as to her tastes. She was an older woman who’d spent the bulk of her life doing for herself and he didn’t know anyone else like that. This was how she’d wanted to live. Couldn’t fault her for that, surely. Maybe not what Ivan would have chosen … well, definitely not what he’d chosen, but he could see the appeal in her neatly arranged, orderly living space.

She noticed him looking around and followed his eyes’ movement. “What?” she asked defensively, “Is it not what you expected?”

“It’s lovely, Bethan,” Ivan said, shrugging off her two bags that he’d carried from the car. “A very fine home. Is that your garden, there?”

He pointed past her, past her all-white kitchen, down a quiet hall, and out through a plate-glass door. She nodded and slipped off her shoes, “Yes, it’s small but … you should sit in it, if you have a moment. Ugh. Please excuse me, Ivan. I have to use the loo. Right this moment.”

He watched her as she quickly took a left opposite the kitchen counter and went toward where he assumed would be a lavatory and a bedroom. Perhaps an office, or a second bedroom. It was small but it was well-designed, her flat. Upon further consideration, it was something he might have chosen for himself, too, had his life gone in an entirely different direction.

Of course, now it had, he thought, bleakly.

Ivan did as he was told and passed through the flat to peek into the back garden. It was also small but pleasant. Organized, again. Small rows of pansies and perennials, a creeping ivy, miniature roses in decorative pots. It reminded him of Katrina’s nan’s garden, but built to scale for London. No grass to speak of. No real room to play. No animals looked like they’d even once stepped paw or claw on the brick path. 

He sat on a white patio chair and looked around, trying to imagine Rosie taking her first steps here. She’d probably split her lip open on one of those heavy planters. Or scuff her perfect pink palms on the brick. Maybe she’d try to scale the small, ivy-covered trellis, like his daredevil child, Sean, had tried to climb everything. Would Ivan be there for any of that? Would Rosie take after him and want to be outside? More likely, she’d take after Bethan and … what. 

What would a child who took after Bethan be like? Serious, probably. Solitary, like her. Maybe independent. Something squeezed inside Ivan’s chest when he thought about how Rosie would never have a proper brother to play with or even laugh with while watching cartoons. Just an old mum and some weird man whose first two sons were almost old enough to be HER da.

He and Katrina had become pregnant with Sean right away, and the boy was barely even walking before they tried for another, so their son would have a playmate. Eddie was just two years younger than Sean and they were best mates. What would Rosie have? Maybe a cat. Or a dog, Ivan concluded. He’d get her a dog, when the girl was ready: a small, neat one, with manners. Hypoallergenic, maybe, and calm. Not like Bruno, their dog in Birmingham—the big, sloppy lug. Ivan would find a creature that was more befitting of a city girl, which of course Rosie would be.

“Right!” Bethan’s voice startled him, coming from the open glass door. “Can I get you something, Ivan? Tea, or … do you want to get a move on? Back to Birmingham, then?”

Ivan quickly looked away from her after noting she’d changed out of her hospital clothes and into a long, plush robe and small pink house slippers. He took a deep breath, rubbed his eyes, then his beard. As he came out of his fugue, he nodded, and replied, “Yes, I’d love tea. Just show me where you keep it and have a sit. Bethan, I was hoping we could talk.”

He followed her into the flat again, shutting the garden behind them. She looked so tired, with her slumped shoulders and the back of her curly hair matted from being too long without a shower in the hospital. He tried to recognize her as the affable and capable woman who had been his assistant half a year before, but couldn’t. Everything had changed after they’d spent the night together, even his memories of her from before, when they were working the job. It was almost as if he’d shut out every bit of her: the good and the bad.

She opened up the cupboard to show him where the tea lived—all sorts of tea, lined up in identical glass canisters with labels and shiny silver lids. On the shelf below, several varieties of biscuits, orderly, also in glass containers, with glass lids that clamped on. She was so organized. It was a dizzying difference from his home, where there were frequently several boxes of treats open—some boxes even empty when they were put back on the shelf by someone who wasn’t thinking, usually Eddie. The undisturbed boxes of biscuits always ended up being Kat’s gluten-free variety, unless times were very desperate and none of them very discerning. 

Once in the kitchen, Bethan reached up to fetch her preferred tea, but the gesture must have pulled at her new stitches because she hissed sharply in pain. Ivan took her gently by the shoulders, then, to pull her away from the cabinet. Aside from helping her into the car, it was the first time he’d touched her in seven months, and in an entirely different context. She let him, practically going limp in his hands.

“Go,” he offered softly, “have a sit. I can manage to make us tea.”

Bethan acquiesced but looked at him strangely. Putting his hands on her to bodily move her away from the countertops seemed almost like it was an imposition, almost as if he’d gone too far, been too familiar. He was befuddled—he’d seen Bethan naked, been inside her, he’d even gotten a bit rough, something he remembered only in flashes—but remained diffident. Bethan shuffled her way out of the small kitchen and through the open floor plan of her flat until she could lower herself carefully down onto the sofa just beyond the dining area. She hefted her feet up on the matching ottoman and folded her hands over her belly, watching him as he found the mugs and the kettle, and commenced with sorting out the tea. 

“What is it that you want to talk about, then?” she called, lightly. Casually, as if there weren’t giant specters looming over every conceivable topic. As if she hadn’t basically just flinched under his touch. As if he’d want to talk about politics, maybe, or the weather. As if the last time they were alone together, they’d not been fucking with wild abandon.

Bethan’s face was inscrutable as she said, “If it’s about leaving back for Birmingham, it’s fine. Ivan, really. It’s fine. I’m going to hire a helper, I think. The nurses at the hospital had recommendations. It’s part of a city program for postnatal care.”

Ivan was working up the nerve to say what he had to say, to ask what he needed to ask, and found that Bethan’s independent, defensive tone was making it so much harder.

“Bethan,” he finally said, setting the water pot to boil before he leaned both hands against the sink to look over the counter at her. “I’m not going back to Birmingham. I’m here now. For you and for the baby—for Rosie. I’d like to have a practical conversation with you about what happens next.”

Across the living space, Bethan looked truly shocked. Her mouth hung open slightly until she closed it abruptly. Then she closed her eyes, and sighed, “Actually, Ivan, I, uh—I’m sorry. I think I might be too tired to have tea. Or that conversation.” She took her feet off the ottoman and began to pry herself off the couch, flinching all the way.

Ivan’s head hung down and he gazed into the sink. It was immaculate. No dirty dishes, no long hairs, no stinking sponge. Swallowing firmly, he added, “Bethan, please. I want to help. I made a decision and it was to be here for you, for our child. I don’t have anywhere else to be, so let me be here. I’ll set up a bassinet, or … do you have a nursery put together? I can make something for you. Convert a cupboard, or an office …”

He fought back the tears that were throbbing behind his eyes. Every stupid thing he’d built for his sons—for Katrina—flashed across his mind: bassinets, cribs, bunk beds, Sean’s big-boy race car bed that Eddie would inherit, a treehouse, the wall unit for the entertainment center, Katrina’s scrapbooking hutch, his conversion of the space under the stairs into a small powder room because there were too many bottoms and too few toilets.

Bethan hadn’t yet managed to fully get free of the sofa. By the time he was finished speaking, she was seated again, staring at him with her lips pressed tightly together and her hands primly folded in her lap once more. 

“You’ve told your wife, then,” she concluded flatly, her voice cold and aloof. “And she’s chucked you out.”

Her words caused bitter bile to rise up in his throat, and Ivan shook his head vociferously. “No! No. I’ve left her, Bethan. I made a choice, you see, and she had no—”

He stopped himself. He was in no frame of mind to get agitated about this. He might lose it, in front of Bethan and all, if given the smallest opening. And if he started, he might not ever stop. There was a creature raging inside of him, just looking for the opportunity to escape and demolish all of the fine work he’d done. Besides, the kettle was whistling. A gift in its timing, as he was able to turn away from her so she couldn’t see the pain in his expression. 

With his back turned, Ivan repeated, with determination in his voice, “I made a choice. To be here for you and the child.”

“You’ve left your wife.”

On the phone that night, she’d referred to Katrina as his “precious wife” and her words stung of the same bitterness now.

Ivan grunted and nodded, pouring the water into the teapot. He watched the leaves blooming beautifully and fragrantly in the strainer. He’d “left” Katrina. It wasn’t at all true and yet it was absolutely brutally and irrevocably true at the same time. He’d left his wife. He did it hoping beyond hope that the separation wouldn’t be forever, but the outlook did not look good. The words almost choked in his throat, but Ivan got them out: “Yes. I’ve left my wife.”

“And your … children?” Bethan persisted, as if she couldn’t bring herself to believe it. Ivan hated her for saying that, just for a moment. A little bright flash of hatred. She thought of his boys _now_? Why torture him with them at this moment? Did she really think he was a man who would _leave his children_? He was not! 

And yet.

“Yes, Bethan, them as well,” he sighed, resigned. “They … the boys are not a part of this.”

“Your JOB?” she pressed on, sounding entirely baffled. The coldness in her voice had turned to concern. “You’ve left your _job_? That historic pour! Ivan? No. I can’t believe it. Have you actually left your job?” 

Ivan didn’t give a flying fuck about that job, to be frank. Not after he sorted the pour with Donal on the drive down. Chicago could go fuck itself, right along with his bastard of a boss, Gareth. It was still Ivan’s pour, in the end, still his building, even if he’d never get the glory after what he’d done. Even if his name would be wiped off the slate of the biggest build that Birmingham had ever seen. Not all was lost, though, because he knew. _He_ knew who was responsible for 99.999% of that foundation being perfect.

Besides, the job was … over. Done. It wasn’t that job, or the subsequent loss of that job, that was responsible for the knot in Ivan’s chest.

He shrugged off her comment along with his thoughts and poured the tea into two identical white mugs. “Do you take sugar or … no milk for this, I suppose. It’s herbal?”  


Bethan was agape again, staring in disbelief. He looked to her for an answer, valiantly trying to not appear cross, until she finally said, “Yes, it’s herbal. A bit of honey, if you would’t mind. It’s—”

“Here, I have it,” Ivan interrupted. It would be impossible _not_ to find something in this orderlyof a kitchen. A little honey pot that looked like a miniature ceramic bee hive, especially. He put a spot of honey in each cup and rattled drawers open until he found the spoons. The teaspoons were neatly found in a separate slot than the tablespoons. Honestly, Ivan wasn’t sure if he’d ever separated a handful of spoons in his life, but it wasn’t displeasing. Everything in its right place. Cheers, Bethan.

He brought over and put down the cups on coasters that protected the coffee table and sat next to Bethan, who looked quite shaken on top of her fatigue. He really hadn’t wanted to upset her, not after the week she’d had. He’d tried to make this—all of this—as gentle as possible. To ease her into it properly. He’d failed Katrina, by simply not telling her until the last moment. She’d received no gentleness and he was ashamed for it.

The edges of the coffee table needed bumpers on them. Rosie would certainly use it to pull herself up to standing, one day, on rubbery new baby legs, and the table would need foam bumpers on the corners at least, so she didn’t put her eye out. 

“Ivan,” she said, turning her head to him and reaching her small, pale hand to settle it on his arm. “You’ve left your family. You’ve left your job—”

“Ah, I was ‘let go,’ actually,” he interjected, staring at her swollen fingers on his woolen jumper as if he wasn’t sure what to make of the things. What to make of anything, really. He was able to admit that he was fired but not that Katrina had told him not to come home again. Curious, that.

“You were … let go. Right. Ivan, god, what will you do?”

Bethan probably thought his career was everything to him. Katrina clearly did. He’d always thought it was his family, his name, that were the most important things in life but now he had none of those things. So, all of them were wrong. 

He tried to look unconcerned, although he was feeling very, very concerned about finding work. “I’ll sort it out, Bethan, I always do. I have contacts here in London. Always a building going up or coming down. You know how it is.”

A small smile, conciliatory, quirked the edge of her mouth and her mood seemed to shift further to kindness. She encouraged him, “Of course you have. King of the builders: Ivan Locke. You’ll find something. You will.”

She _had_ been working as his assistant when it—that night—happened, so of course she knew he had many years of connections in every town, including London. But if they’d take his calls, once they learned of what he’d done … not even Ivan knew that. Word traveled quickly, especially in construction. Especially gossip.

Ivan sat still, staring at the fuzzy lushness of Bethan’s robe’s sleeve, trying to figure out what to say next. How could he assure her that it would all be all right when he didn’t believe it himself? 

The urge to get profoundly, stupidly drunk welled up in Ivan and he once again felt bile rise in his throat. He grasped for the logic that might steady him: Getting drunk would help nothing. That’s something his father would have done—gone to the pub to run from his troubles, to pretend they weren’t happening as he poured more cider down his throat—not something Ivan had done for many, many years.

Bethan gave him one more friendly pat on the arm before she gingerly reached for her tea. Her tone was even warmer when she asked, “Would you like to stay here, Ivan? You could. In my flat, with me and Rosie, while you look for—I mean, as long as you …” Bethan took a deep breath to add, with more focus, “The baby will be able to come home soon and I could use the help, really. It would save me money and you _are_ her father. I’d put off turning my guest room into a proper nursery until next month, and … well, you’re a builder … so?” 

Jaw clenched, Ivan looked up to meet Bethan’s deep-set eyes. Humbled, he nodded gratefully. When he could find it in him to speak, he murmured, “Thank you, yes.”

He moved into Bethan’s flat three days after the baby arrived—if it could even be considered “moving in” when all Ivan did was relocate his phone charger from his hotel room to her place.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ivan Locke struggles to find his satisfaction yet retain his dignity.

IVAN

 

The first week he was in London, Ivan slept in Bethan’s spare room, on a daybed that appeared to have been an oversight in her otherwise modern flat. It was nearly too short for him, despite him not being a particularly tall man, and the bottom half was dressed with some sort of flounce. Ruffles. On three sides were creaky brass railings that Ivan never failed to knock his arm, knuckles or nose into. It was hideous and he loathed sleeping in it, but it felt like it was his penance. What could he do about it, anyway? Bethan didn’t want him to leave for a hotel, yet she hadn’t offered to share her bed. 

Nor had Ivan asked her to do so. She needed to recuperate, anyway. So, the frilly, flouncy day bed, it was. 

Little Rosie came home once she’d stabilized. From the very first night in the flat, she slept in Bethan’s room in a cot that Ivan had painstakingly assembled. That way, Bethan could feed her in the night, or she half-joked, check to see if she was breathing every four seconds. Ivan understood. It had been many years, but he remembered Katrina checking on Sean constantly, falling asleep while feeding him, bolting upright in bed at every hitch in their son’s breath.

Staying in the room that would ultimately be their — he and Bethan’s — daughter’s room also gave Ivan a chance to overhaul it, as per his skill set. He assembled all of the baby furniture in the week before they brought her home: a changing table, small dresser, toy box, the aforementioned cot, a crib, some shelving that attached to the wall. Bethan had ideas of how she wanted the room to look, where she wanted the extraneous furniture to be distributed, how she wanted the apartment to be arranged. Of course she did. Ivan did his best to keep his mouth shut, even though every atom of his body was keening to manage the conversion of Bethan’s somewhat sterile flat to a place where a child would grow up. 

Rosie, once home with them, would go down to sleep early, exhausted as babies are by the newness of everything, which would give Ivan ample time to make sure that Bethan had some food in her before she took a bath and then also put herself to bed. That left Ivan anywhere from four to six hours of being fidgety and by himself before his eyelids started to droop. 

Before, back in Birmingham, especially with his odd hours when he was on a job, it wasn’t uncommon for him to go to bed by 8 or 9 pm. Sometimes he went to bed at that time even if he didn’t have an early alarm set, just so he and Katrina could have time alone once the boys were old enough to look after themselves at night. 

Laying in that stupid guest bed, trying to sleep, Ivan had many conversations in his head with the ghost of his father. What might he say, if he saw Ivan in a flouncy day bed, surrounded by someone else’s life, someone else’s decisions. Back in Birmingham, Ivan could ward off the nagging anxiety he’d inherited from his father, because he was surrounded by his wonderful successes, of which his father had enjoyed none: a happy wife, two healthy boys, good food on the table, a lovely house, two vehicles, self-respect and plenty of time to live life well. But now, Ivan was in a London flat with no job, an exhausted older woman who was not only not his wife but slept in another room, a new baby girl who was fragile at best and sickly at worst, and a damaged notion of self-respect. His father’s voice in his head was stronger now, gaining ground. Ivan found it increasingly difficult, at his lowest moments, to discern where his father ended and he himself began.

_I’m doing the best I can_ , Ivan reminded his father’s ghost, _which is more than you could ever say._ And he was. He was doing his very best to make everything all right again. The boys would be okay and the new baby would be all right. Bethan was fine. Distant, guarded, but preoccupied. And Katrina, Katrina was … doing what she wanted, Ivan could only assume. There was much work for Ivan to do where Kat was concerned, but he knew that before long, they’d have a serviceable relationship once again. For the boys, for their sons. And because they had something real, between them. This was just a bump in the road. A large bump, surely, but that’s all it was.

Work in London was also proving to be more elusive than he’d expected. His former boss, Gareth the bastard, had, for all his talk of Ivan’s spotless 10-year record, lived up to his nickname. Whether he’d blacklisted Ivan’s name for directorships, or if it was just a run of shit luck, Ivan hadn’t secured interviews with any positions even remotely commensurate with his level of experience. 

Out of desperation, Ivan took a job with a demo crew two weeks into being in London, just to get some money coming in. Bethan seemed pleased by his lack of hubris in taking a manual labor job on a crew. Although she said she was frightened at first to be at home alone with the baby, she quickly adapted.

They—he and Bethan, that is, it seemed so strange to refer to he and Bethan as a “they” after nearly half a lifetime of that term being about someone else—skirted around what they were doing together in her flat, other than being unlikely roommates and the tired parents of a newborn. Once Bethan recovered from the shock of the early birth and the emergency cesarean, once she had a week or two of rest and could be sure he wasn’t going to skip out in the wee hours of the night, she seemed more appreciative of Ivan being around. Or so it seemed.

They played house as best as they could: Bethan began to cook their tea, as she was better at it, Ivan would do the grocery shopping and the washing up; Bethan would find a TV program for Ivan to fall asleep in front of; they would take turns changing Rosie’s dirty nappies and switch off pacing the flat to get the baby to sleep in their arms. Ivan baby-proofed the apartment as much as Bethan would allow him, her saying that the baby was still several months away from crawling.

It wasn’t a terrible life by any means, despite Ivan feeling torn in half through all of the first month. He went from stomping out of Islington in a hardhat and boots, swinging a sledge and operating a jackhammer for several hours, before he returned to tiptoe around the flat in his socks, feeding Rosie with a bottle while Bethan made them shepherd’s pie. Then, after supper,after Bethan would retire and Ivan would clean, he’d go to the flouncy day bed and lie there until he could find sleep.

Ivan found he was restless at best, bored at worst. Emasculated by waking up in his daughter’s would-be room, in the horrid flounced nightmare, he longed on a visceral level for the giant bed he shared with Katrina, waking up with the dog begging to go out. He missed the view out the picture window into the back garden. He even missed work: having his own crew of men who trusted him — even bloody Donal. He missed getting home to find Sean and Eddie fighting over the PS4 controller or laughing at stupid videos on the web. He missed feeling like he belonged.

And he missed sex—intimacy of any kind, in fact—dearly. Just being touched. His wife wouldn’t see him and Bethan barely looked at him. Certainly, Bethan didn’t look at him in _that way_ , at least not that he had noticed. Although, she had become quite kind and tender with him, especially once she got into a good rhythm of sleeping when the baby slept.

Ivan’s memories of their night together, the one that produced wee Rosie, were just flashes that he’d get now and again. He’d worked so hard to push them out of his head in the months after that night, and it worked. Maybe too well. He’d light upon something in passing—the smell of Bethan’s skin, her laugh, her lovely little feet that he was pretty sure he’d had in his mouth at some point—would remind him that he’d had her the proverbial six ways from Sunday the night that he put a baby in her. Something must have been pent up in him, because he wasn’t usually such an animal. Never with Kat, anyway. Either that, or the wine had gone from merely making him a little randy to turning him into a raving maniac. Judging by how shit he felt the next morning and how quickly he’d wanted to shower the night off in that Croydon guest house, it seemed he’d enjoyed himself a little too much. Blame the wine, a voice said in his mind.

Then, there was the drive home to Birmingham, Ivan compartmentalizing all the way. He listened to a radio station that played good bit of northern soul. Along the way, he stopped to put something into his stomach and then promptly puked it all back up in the lavatory. Looking in the mirror to give himself a stern talking to: it meant nothing, she was nothing to him, it didn’t change anything, it was a night of revelry, nothing more, the block had gone down and he was happy about that, above all. Then, arriving home in Birmingham, sitting in the car for a full ten minutes before he had it in himself to go inside. Convincing himself that all he needed to do to wash the night from his head was to go inside and show Kat how much he loved her. Yes, that’s what he decided. He just needed to remind himself, as soon as possible, what love looked like.

He’d slapped a big grin on his face, focusing on the job—yes, _the job,_ which had gone perfectly—as he walked into the house. Upon opening the front door, Ivan found Kat in the family room, looking perfectly sweet and tousled, pink-cheeked from doing her Pilates DVD. Taking off his coat and throwing it on the stairs, he’d opened his arms wide and cheesily trumpeted, “Honey, I’m home!”

Katrina had looked up at him from the floor to laugh at him, asking what he was on about, being such a nut. She asked if he was hungry, Ivan remembered that. He was, ravenously so, but he didn’t want to wait for tea. He wanted her to follow him to the bedroom right that second, on account of how fucking hot she looked in her yoga pants, doing ballet or whatever. Kat snorted and waved him off but Ivan was persistent. They only had so many hours without the boys around, and he was going to make her scream, he promised. She didn’t even wind up finishing her workout, in favor of the one they had in bed, he recalled.

But now, that was all gone and he was with Bethan, living with her in London. He’d made his bed and now he was literally lying in it. There was nothing technically stopping him from asking Bethan if he could share her bed. But, then again, there was nothing _starting_ him asking, either. It’s not exactly easy to seduce someone you’d already had a one night stand with. Even if she’d have him, Ivan wasn’t sure how to initiate that conversation. Not without wine, anyway, and look where that got him.

He didn’t have to, as it happened. Bethan eventually walked in on him while he was wanking, a month or more into their cohabitation. It was very late, hours after she’d gone off to bed, even an hour or two after she’d woken up to feed Rosie for her midnight feeding. Ivan had been watching some stupid show on the television that had a mildly sexy scene in it—nothing overly pornographic, really, just the suggestion of a woman going down on a man—and he found himself getting hard. 

Ivan had barely felt any sexual stir since reaching London and entering Bethan’s world of early bedtimes and fluffy robes and cracking nipples and unclear arrangements, in his newly ambiguous marital state, so he went to unburden himself. He shut the door of the lavatory quietly but didn’t turn on the light for fear of catching his reflection in the mirror as he jerked off like a horny teenager. It needed doing, however, and immediately. Grabbing a hand towel in preparation, he loosened his trousers to push them and his boxers down far enough to give himself access. 

Ivan leaned his other palm against the tiled bathroom counter and tried to concentrate on an image in his mind. He needed something real right now, not a glossy, trussed-up porn star muted on his phone’s browser or a soft-focus, made-up actress on TV. He needed something that he could conjure, that he could remember feeling. Head down, Ivan closed his eyes and summoned his favorite go-to for wank fodder, reality category: Katrina’s amazing, mind-blowing, earth-shaking, god-given skill at sucking his cock.

The rest of their sex was fairly pedestrian, to be honest. Effective, but pedestrian. They had their moments, definitely, their stretches of time in which they fucked like rabbits, but as they’d found what worked for them over 15 years of coupledom, they rarely strayed from the routine: First, her giving him head to get him hard, during which he’d always get a little too close to finishing. Then him giving _her_ head to get her wet and calm himself down, and then her on her back, with much kissing and licking of lips and necks and chests and nipples. And finally Kat spreading her legs and him filling her up. It was good, warm, loving sex. Never any problems there, despite what Ivan’s private browser history might say to the contrary. Definitely not the reason why—

_No, don’t think about that,_ Ivan warned himself. Better to think of Katrina’s warm, wet mouth. She’d spoiled him. _And now he’d never have it again. Shut up. Concentrate._ He hadn’t been with many women, really—a couple of girls before Katrina and then, well, Bethan, of course—but he knew a good blowjob when he got one. And Kat’s were spectacular. He was thinking of her mouth on him, how she ran her thumb against the underside of his sac as she sucked him. It drove him mad when she did that. She attended to him like she enjoyed having her mouth on him, which she must have, because she’d often get slick in the process, before he’d even touched her between thighs. The Pilates kept her legs limber and taut, and Ivan loved how her lean muscles felt under his fingers as he held her open. Plus, the noises she’d make sometimes could only be described as feral, if he could work the right angle inside of her. Ivan, growing tenser, turned to lean his hip against the counter to steady himself. It was working. As long as he didn’t think about how Kat wouldn’t—. 

Suddenly, the door was opening and the light was flipped on and there was Bethan, blinking in the sudden brightness, looking confused at there being a wild man tugging at his dick in her dark lavatory.

“Oh god!” she yelped, jumping back as if he’d leapt out at her from the bushes. Ivan was also very startled, and worse, he was extremely hard and had been very into fucking his fist when the lights came on. He registered that it was Bethan and saw that her eyes had already flickered down to spot his cock in his hand. There was no denying it: He was busted. 

“Arrrrrrrgh,” he groaned, breathing hard, his heart thumping in his chest from the shame. That’s all he needed, to have a shame heart attack while jerking off in his baby mama’s bathroom. Turning his back to her, Ivan tried in vain to pull his pants up, stuff himself back in, and maybe pretend like he was just—fuck. Washing his hands, maybe? What’s the use? Instead, he bleated out a pathetic, “I’m sorry!”

Bethan was already halfway through starting her own apology, “Ivan, no—I’m SO sorry!”

He rushed to zip up over his erection and distended boxer briefs, shaking his head.

She kept on, “I should have knocked, I just—it was dark, but … there’s a lock! I mean, really. I have to pee.”

Ivan sighed, rubbing his other hand over his face and beard. It’s not like she hadn’t seen him naked before. She’d even seen him with his dick in his hand. He was acting like a child by pretending like nothing had happened. So, he turned back around and frowned at Bethan sheepishly, shrugging his shoulders. She, over the shock, stared back at him with one hand over her mouth, looking half mortified and half like she was trying to stifle a cackle.

Bethan started giggling first. Ivan nodded at her, trying not to laugh, himself. Caught wanking. _What a fucking knob_. And then the two of them, standing there in the john at something o'clock like two fools. Pretty soon, both of them were shaking with silent laughter—quietly, of course, so as not to wake the baby.

“Well, I’ll … ah, leave you to it,” Ivan said, wiping a small bit of wetness coming from the corner of his eye. He’d needed a good laugh. It was no replacement for an orgasm, but it would do for now.

Bethan, still standing in the doorway as she recovered, reached out as he moved past her. Still laughing a little, she squeezed his shoulder fondly. She held on for a moment, too, as if she wanted to stop him from leaving.

“I’m sorry, Ivan,” she whispered, lightly. He glanced at her, then, expecting to see her laughing at him still, but instead found that her eyes were sympathetic. _God, what must she think of him?_

He nodded and pulled away from her touch, retreating to the relative privacy of that flouncy guest bed, which he was quite positive had yet to lose its virginity.

 _Tonight, however, was the night_ , he thought. Provided he could successfully summon up the memory of Katrina’s mouth once again. Provided he could get over the embarrassment of the scene in the lavatory.

He waited until he heard Bethan’s bedroom door click closed, then Ivan quickly undressed, careful to leave his undershirt within reach when he slid into the sheets. He’d gone soft in all the awkwardness and it would take him a long time to get hard again. He’d been so close when Bethan had walked in—it seemed a shame that the body couldn’t just pause itself in those scenarios—but his satisfaction seemed stuck inside of him, taunting him blue. If he let it.

The Katrina fantasy wasn’t working anymore, not after that. His mind lit upon the distant memory of her walking in on him wanking to porn, maybe 10, 12 years ago. It had turned into such a row that he didn’t think she’d ever let him touch her again. She’d felt challenged somehow, while Ivan, red-faced and flustered, was laid bare and made to feel ashamed. Katrina had been expecting some soft-core girl-on-girl action when she playfully picked up his phone to see what he’d been watching. Something cheesy, silk on silk. She truly didn’t like what she’d seen.

“How can you watch that kind of … _violence_ against women, Ivan?” she’d spat out at him, throwing his phone back on the bed, all the play gone out of her. One should never be a spy in the house of self-love. You never know what you might find.

Kat went on and on, utterly disgusted by him, saying about something about misogyny and the oppression of young girls. He hadn’t known what to say. The heart wants what it wants, the saying goes, and Ivan felt that his urges were largely the same. It was indefensible, she said. Couldn’t he just think of her?

It was fairly rare that he pleasured himself, in the years with Katrina. Just when she wasn’t in the mood or it had been a long while. After the babies were born. He still had his needs. It wasn’t like he was watching snuff or underage girls, and it wasn’t as if he’d ever treat Katrina, the mother of his children, with the cruelty that got him off so quickly and decisively in 3-minute snippets online. It was just a fantasy. Everyone has them, he reasoned. His were just a little more twisted than the average bloke’s, maybe. Surely every porn video’s millions of hit counts couldn’t have all been him!

He couldn’t get it back. He tried for a while and then gave up on his imagination. That fantasy of Kat sucking him, even the notion of it, felt too dangerous to navigate his mind toward. Who knew where he might end up? He was always only three or four thoughts away from deep sadness about what he was missing in Birmingham. However, he was still suffering from the pressing need to come, so Ivan eventually sought out his failsafe method: quietly jerking off to a free porn site on his phone’s browser, the volume one click up so he might hear the faint sounds of a woman’s ecstatic/agonized cries.

Ivan had a routine with the clips he sought out: a warmup—something gentle, maybe a massage that turned dirty, or a hidden camera; a main course of something harder, anything with “rough” in the title, something in which at least one woman’s expression turned from pleasure to being overwhelmed; and finishing off with some kind of quick-cut compilation of women coming as hard and messily as possible.

After he finished and cleaned himself up with his dirty shirt, Ivan thought that maybe he should take up running again. Get a pair of trainers and take it back up. He couldn’t sit in a room, wanking forever. He had to get his demons out somehow. At least he should be able to outrun them.

 

* * *

 

The next day, when Ivan got home from work, he was surprised to learn that Bethan and Rosie had left the house to pick up a couple of things at the shops. He was about to chide Bethan for not texting him a list of things to pick up when he saw the bottles on the counter. 

Bethan had picked up two bottles of Portuguese red.

Ivan looked at her, frowning in his confusion—were they having guests? was it her birthday or something?—but she smiled wanly, shrugging. She gave him a kind wink and said, “I thought perhaps we’d have wine with our meal tonight.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ivan Locke finds some satisfaction at the Squalor Victoria pub and immediately falls right the fuck off the wagon.

IVAN

 

 

Seemed like as good a time as any to start up a couple new hobbies: one, running, was virtuous; the other was a complementary vice—grabbing a drink after his run.

Running regularly definitely helped Ivan to collect his thoughts. He was physically knackered after work—fucking hell, that was true—but after a long day of breaking down walls and stripping out old pipes and muscling broken appliances out of spaces set for demolition, a quiet jog through the darkened streets of the city helped to clear his mind even if it was only for 20 minutes. He ran after dinner, before bed, with the hopes the running might help to put him to sleep. Anything was better than sitting by himself in the dark in Bethan’s flat, tiptoeing around as she and Rosie alternated between sleeping and waking up to feed.

The wine didn’t work. For the record. Despite whatever hope Bethan held, and for all Ivan’s history with wine making him—let’s say “spirited”—it didn’t work.

The wine had turned on Ivan, just like it turns on everyone at some point or another, he imagined.

Bless Bethan for trying, though. As she didn’t seem to have much interest in sex, herself, it was clearly a selfless gesture. They shared a bottle over dinner one Friday, chatting amicably about the baby, his work and the neighborhood. Ivan did the washing up as Bethan fed Rosie and put her down for the first time in her cot in her own room. They finished the wine and shyly retired to her bedroom.

But then, then they were alone and in bed, partially clothed, and Bethan was whispering that she wasn’t ready for full-on sex just yet, despite her spirit being willing. Ivan was wine-woozy but understanding—almost too understanding. In a way, he was relieved. He felt fondness for Bethan, especially in this generous context, but he had a difficult time imagining fucking her. He wasn’t sure he could muster any fraction of the ardor they’d shared when Rosie was made, and she wasn’t his wife. Things were different now, anyway. She was different. He was different.

Bethan surprised him by being completely unfazed by his body’s lack of response. Perhaps she was relieved, too. She withdrew her small hand from his boxers, where it was gently rubbing at his flaccid cock, trying to coax some sort of reaction from him.

“Talk to me, would you, Bethan?” he asked quietly, embarrassed but desperate for her to say something sexy, something salacious.

“What? What do you want me to say?” Bethan whispered back, her voice barely audible. “I don’t—what if I wake the baby?”

Ivan nodded in the dark. The baby was just in the other room. “Mm, no. No, you’re right,” he murmured. “Never mind.”

He relaxed in her hands, tried to summon up the dirtiest fantasies he had. Bethan, in the role of his lover. Bending her to his will, fucking her senseless. Wielding his hard cock like a weapon, driving it into her until she screamed his name.

Ah, but the baby! Thwarting him. Again.

It was useless. It required suspension of disbelief, and he couldn’t pretend he felt what he was probably should for her. He wasn’t going to fuck Bethan like that ever again. Not now that Rosie had made her way into the world. Bethan deserved better than what he gave her back then or anything he could offer her now. She deserved better than him. Someone who would make love to her, who could be gentle and hard at the same time. Someone who didn’t need wine.

The image of his father—that epic failure with his hat in hand, asking Ivan’s mum for another chance, saying he “deserved it”—popped up in Ivan’s mind. The old man probably had issues getting it up, too, the fucking tosser.

_No, Ivan, no. That’s no good. Don’t think of your father and his shriveled old dick, for fuck’s sake. Not helping. Think of porn._

When, after several minutes, Ivan’s cock failed to rise, Bethan simply gave up. She perfunctorily kissed his cheekbone and sleepily murmured something about trying again some other time. Ivan grumbled an apology and put his arm around Bethan, who rested her head against his shoulder. He was seething. She seemed fine, snoozing already, but he was livid at himself for being incapable of doing the right thing at the right time. Categorically so. Where was his libido when he needed it?

Eventually, Bethan rolled away from him to sleep curled up on her side of the bed. Ivan remembered with a sharp pang how Kat like to sleep half on top of him, with her head cradled in the crook of his shoulder and one leg draped over his. She listened to his heartbeat when she couldn’t sleep. Said it soothed her, without ever knowing that it soothed him, as well.

Ugh. Fuck it.

Ivan slipped out of bed to dress quickly and go for a run.

Running with wine sloshing around in his stomach was wholly unpleasant and that’s how he found the Squalor Vic. That same night, after the shit attempt at sex. He ducked in, ordered and drank one lager while he caught his breath, and then ordered a second while he further mulled over the scene with Bethan. Maybe that’s how it would be from here out, he thought dismally. Maybe the only sex he’d have in the future would just be him tugging one out in the lavatory while watching hardcore porn on his phone. 

Instead of bolstering Ivan’s libido, instead of it taking him outside himself and turning him into a raving fuckbeast, the goddamned wine had made him maudlin, and it made him angry. He couldn’t stop thinking about how now he could fail both mothers of his children in myriad ways, in the great tradition of the Locke men. Useless. Unilaterally so: First Kat, then Bethan. 

 _Sod the wine. Let’s see what whisky does,_ Ivan thought, seated on a barstoo to peer at the bottles behind the bartender. The urge to get profoundly drunk had struck him as soon as he set foot in the Squalor Victoria. Like a shadow, maybe his urge to drink caught up to him. He couldn’t outrun that, after all.

At least he’d tried. At least they’d all tried.

 

Ivan gradually worked into a routine of ending most of his jogs—short as they were, but getting longer every time—with a lager or two at the Squalor Vic, a small tavern that once was a depressing and proper pub for old men but had been reimagined, like the rest of Islington, into a hipster’s idea of a depressing, proper pub for old men. He liked it, nonetheless: dark, wood-paneled and somber, a good variety of beers on draught, decent food, and a mixed clientele that didn’t seem to get too wild, as long as it wasn’t the week-end. Probably to the dismay of the owners, a crew of the old sots stayed loyal to the location, so Ivan was never the oldest bloke at the bar. Plus, it wasn’t far from Bethan’s flat.

It didn’t take long—just a few weeks—before Ivan just skipped his run and went straight to the comforting embrace of the Squalor Victoria. It engaged him on a different level: he could watch his football matches, listen to music on the old-time jukebox, have a meal, read the paper, whatever. He was mostly left to himself, too, which pleased him. It was usually dead, just a few other people in there, also keeping to themselves. Once, a bloke and Ivan exchanged some ideas of how Aston Villa could go fuck themselves, proving that one didn’t even have to be a Birmingham City fan to hate those twats. A few women had approached him—cautiously, shyly even—lightly attempting to chat him up. But once they saw him thumb his wedding ring while studiously keeping his eyes fixed on the football match playing on the TV behind the bar, they didn’t press, and he didn’t chase after them.

On the night that he found what had eluded him for months, Ivan got hellaciously, unrepentantly drunk. It was a long sequence of events that led him there, but it was the phone call that provoked it.

Bethan had been up all night the night before with the baby, which had prompted Ivan to leave her bed (was it their bed now?) and retreat to the couch for a scrap of rest. The couch, in turn, murdered his lower back, which made his strenuous workday even harder. At the end of it, every muscle aching, he and Bethan had a bit of a row after neither of them felt like cooking. Something about her not paying for another pizza. She ate some toast and excused herself to bed, so Ivan left to find something better than bread and marmalade. A man cannot live on toast alone!

Two hours, a meal of sausage and chips, and four lagers later, Ivan’s mood had still not improved. He was increasingly angry but unsure of at whom. He tried to find a focal point for his peevishness, but the harder he tried, the more it turned into a general sense of disquiet and resignation. It had been days since anyone in Birmingham had returned any of his calls. This is why they needed a mediator, he thought sourly. Someone to compel Katrina to communicate with him. Carrying on like this, without a single word to him—it couldn’t be legal. It certainly wasn’t fair. How would he see his sons again?

Being sacked from his marriage just like being sacked from his job. Ivan had brought both on himself, there was no denying that. Of course Kat would feel the need to protect herself from him, at least emotionally. Maybe financially. But the boys? The house? Did she think he’d squat his own house? Steal the boys and move to Spain? A mediator, then. Someone objective, to act as a buffer.

To be fair, Katrina had probably gone back to full-time work as a nutritionist and was busy. Nothing had been mentioned about Ivan needing to provide financial support for the boys, so she was likely taking it all on herself or living off their savings. Honestly, he’d be happy to send Katrina all the money she asked for, if only she’d just talk to him for a moment. Just a moment of her time, even if it were for sentimentality’s sake.

There was no reply when he called her cell. There was never a reply. She’d cut him out like he was a cancer, like he was some chronic philanderer, like a stranger. As if that wasn’t humiliating enough, Ivan had also been asked to stop calling Kat’s mother or sisters, to stop pleading with them them to pass along his messages. It wasn’t fair. Sean and Eddie would always be his _sons_. Katrina was still his _wife_. They’d taken VOWS. One mistake! Just one!

Without realizing it, Ivan found himself swaying outside the Squalor Vic, halfway home to being off his tits, doing something he hadn’t yet done: calling the house phone. He’d done it all night on the trip down to London but not once since. He was a bit proud of that, but his pride had taken a powder, now that he was drinking again. Might as well call.

It was 9 o’clock at night and, to Ivan’s surprise, there was no answer. The machine picked up and the whole family’s voices relayed their away greeting. The sound of his own voice came first: “You’ve reached the Lockes’ residence.” Kat, then, in her silly sing-song voice: “But we’re not home!” Eddie, laughing: “OR we are home and don’t want to speak to you.” Then Sean, also giggling: “Leave us a message at the beep … or don’t! We never check it!” Finally, both the boys together, yelling out: “BEEEEP!” And then, of course, an actual, mechanized beep and it was recording.

“Hellooo,” Ivan cooed lightly into the phone. Trying to sound upbeat instead of tipsy. What a phony. “It’s me, Ivan! Uh, it’s Daddy, I mean—Dad. I’m calling because …” he started, but trailed off, realizing he couldn’t very well leave a message asking why Kat hadn’t given him two words since he’d left home. It would confuse the boys, certainly, and probably enrage their mum, too. Anything he said would enrage her, he suspected. “I’m calling ’cause I miss you all very much. Even Bruno, but don’t tell him or he’ll get, uh, he’ll get a big head. At any rate, I’m thinking of you, and … uh, Kat, Katrina, please call me back. I have some important, ah, I have questions. About—uh, support. For you, and the boys. If you’d just please ring me back, I’d be—” 

_What? What would you be, Ivan? Redeemed?_

He cleared his throat nervously and took a deep breath, dropping his voice at least two octaves as he abandoned any attempt to sound cheery: “Please, just call me back? I, er … I love you. All. And I miss you. All of you. Right, then. Please, uh, please call.”

Not a strong finish, but at least he didn’t start crying. 

Ivan ground his teeth and stared at the pavement for a bit before turning around to head back into the Vic, and finally get around to the business of getting properly shitfaced.

 

The next day, after his hangover had softened from a banshee shriek to a low moan, Ivan pieced together the night as he drove around aimlessly for 45 minutes with all the windows rolled down. He was trying to get the smell of sex out of his estate car, using London air and a scented pine tree freshener hung in the driver's side vent. He would remember that he’d had a good chat about politics with an old codger at the bar, who'd reminded him of his maternal grandfather, aside from being markedly more progressive. He’d ordered a round of whiskeys for the old man, the bartender, and anyone else who was in earshot. He didn’t have the money but he did it anyway. Sometime after, he’d begged a Marlboro Light off a girl outside—which must’ve meant that he was certifiably drunk, because he’d quit a decade before.

After the cigarette, Ivan’s memory of the night grew patchy, as if a sack had been drawn over his head. He was at the Vic, certainly, his bad day fading further from his mind with every sip, and then he was talking to a red-headed woman who bought him a drink after she spilled his. He remembered that with some clarity, because he was pretty sure it was his own wrist that knocked into his whiskey drink and sloshed it all over his lap. She’d asked for a bar towel and had it pressed against his thigh to soak up the liquid when they’d made a very special sort of eye contact. That look, he could recall clearly. He felt it reverberate down to his groin.

So, perhaps it wasn’t that surprising that the next thing Ivan remembered, he came to and was balls deep in a girl in the back of a car. _His car,_ he registered dimly, baffled as he maneuvered in the cramped quarters and kicked aside his hard hat. He didn’t recall leaving the bar or walking to where he’d parked. How had he even remembered the location in that state? Had he driven them elsewhere? He hoped the fuck not. 

He didn’t know the woman’s name or if he’d paid his bar tab or if he was wearing a condom—all Ivan knew is that he was hard as nails and had paused in the middle of absolutely railing the girl who was bent over the seat back of his estate car. And he felt fucking fantastic.

As his mind rapidly worked to piece together how he’d ended up here, he took in the view. The state of her made him think they’d been at it for not long: Her short skirt was flipped up and wrinkled, her black panties were damp, pulled down around her shins. Ivan’s hands were spanning the upper curve of the round, white softness of her arse, which had just been bouncing merrily off the muscles of his lower stomach. When he paused, she twisted around, gripping the car seat with long nails to face him. Ivan realized with a start that although she was vaguely recognizable to him as the ginger girl who had tried to mop up the spilled drink in the bar, he didn’t know her. Moreover, she was young. Very young. Far too young for him. She couldn’t have been a spot over 20. Good lord, who had he copped off with?

“You all right? Why’d you stop?” she panted, pulling away from his hips a bit as she tried to look at her own arse for a clue. Her eyes weren’t focusing very well, he could see that, despite the dimness. She mumbled, “Have you come?”

Ivan shook his head, feeling dazed. “No, not yet,” he replied woozily, before taking the opportunity get a look out the windows. They were fogged up, so he reached over and scrubbed a spot clear with his shirt that was balled up next to his knees. When had he taken that off? How had he wound up completely starkers in his estate car with a fully clothed girl almost half his age? “What—where are we?” 

For her part, she also seemed confused. She nervously asked, “How would I know? This is your car, isn’t it? Aren’t we outside your place?”

Ivan squinted, trying to see out, but it was no use. If he’d driven them somewhere, well … they were there and no harm was done. If he hadn’t, he was parked a few streets over from Bethan’s. “Mm,” he mused. “Ah, yeah, it’s my car, but—”

The girl interrupted him by turning away from him again with an exasperated groan and pulling completely off his cock. “What are you—? Ugh, and here I thought you wanted to quote fuck the shit out of me, unquote. Is what you said. D’you even know my name?”

The girl contorted under him until she wound up seated against the door, thighs still open but ankles trapped in her pants. Her face was petulant, cross, but still pretty, even with her flushed cheeks and her fringe stuck to her forehead. She looked like a little ginger doll, with thick black eyelashes and deep-red painted lips, a smattering of freckles. Ridiculously hot, actually, now that he could see her clearly. Ivan was immediately sorry he wasn’t still inside of her.

“No,” Ivan, busted, confessed with actual contrition, scooting over until he was kneeling opposite her on the back seat—a better vantage point to regard her. He couldn’t entirely believe he’d pulled someone this attractive. Or young. Dear lord, let her be older than his son. Please please please. She was at the Vic, of course she was. Right?

He called her bluff, feeling bolstered by the fact that he’d just been doing to her what he’d apparently promised, the evidence still protruding from his lap: “Do you know mine?”

The girl looked at him, snapping incredulously, “Yeah! It’s Ivan. Married Ivan? From Birmingham?” 

Fuck. Had he told her that? Married _and_ from Birmingham!? What the fuck else had he said?

She moved to pull up her panties, but Ivan reached over and gently stayed her hand. She looked over at him, hesitant but not unwilling. He mumbled, “Don’t. Sorry. I am … quite drunk. Tell me it again. I won’t forget.”

She shook her head with a small smile and raised eyebrows, mocking him lightly, “Oh? You won’t? You’ve already forgotten it twice!” Despite the ribbing she was giving Ivan, she leaned forward a bit and reached for his torso. “Amber,” she mumbled, her approving gaze traveling over his body. She ran her fingers across his chest. “God, you have a lot of tattoos. Wouldn’t have thought it.” 

“Amber,” Ivan repeated it, nodding patiently. Yes, yes—how surprising his tattoos were. Each and every one representing a time in his life that he used to be proud of. 

She looked away from his chest and defiantly made eye contact when he said her name. She was too young, too fit, and too drunk for him to be doing this, but he was going to do it anyway. When else would he get the chance? He needed this. His cock hadn’t wavered once through their entire discussion of names, either. Additionally, he was finally conscious enough to notice he wasn’t wearing any protection. 

“Yes, Ivan.” Her demeanor challenged him, almost taunting him with staged obedience. Submissive play-acting. It was increasingly clear that this was still very much on, that this was her game. Amber coquettishly bit her lower lip in a way that Ivan appreciated as being downright pornographic. He groaned and reached for her.

“Are you taking birth control?” he asked, momentarily practical. She nodded. Fine, then. But what about—“How old are you?”

“Old enou—” Amber started, but shut up as Ivan roughly yanked her ankles up so he could strip off her panties.

It had been so long since he’d smelled the musky, wet scent of a woman who wanted him, who opened for him out of want, instead of pity or obligation. He didn’t realize how much he’d missed it. He wasn’t blacked out any longer. Instead, there was a heady haze around him as he focused on getting what he wanted.

She blurted out a surprised, giggling “Oh my god!” when Ivan manhandled her. When she languidly reached her arms up, her knuckles left crooked trails in the foggy condensation on the glass of the windows. Amber closed her eyes and moaned, writhing against him. Dirty girl, Ivan thought, appreciating the feel of her supple skin under his fingers.

Holding both of her legs with one arm and using the arm other to lift her hips up, Ivan pressed forward until his cock was once again buried in the tight, wet grip of Amber’s center. He groaned in relief, forgetting where he was again, landing squarely in the moment, feeling very much that wherever he was was exactly where he belonged—at least at for now: in his car, with some girl called Amber. Whatever. He bowed over her and thrust his cock into her lithe, flexible body while she gamely held her own, angling her hips up to permit his deepest insertion, panting and grimacing. Still holding her legs as he bent her in half, Ivan snaked a hand between them to jerk her blouse up. A thin, lacy black bra covered the milky white skin of her small, pert breasts until he wrenched that away too, roughly grabbing at her breasts. 

She was way out of his league, he surmised. Even when he was her age, he couldn’t have swung her. He greedily ran his hand across the softness of her tits, alternating between the two as he thrust violently into her, teasing and pinching at her pale nipples until she sucked in air between her clenched teeth.

“Yes,” Amber wheezed at him, her head rolling back against the armrest of the car door to bare her neck. She rasped, “Fuck me. Fuck me, Ivan! Come on. Harder!”

To his surprise and pleasure, Amber gripped Ivan’s wrist and moved his hand from her breast to her throat. Gasping, she urged, “Put your hand … like—”

Ivan didn’t need to be told twice. He’d been wishing for something like this since he was a boy, although he’d never done it. Not outside of his fantasies. He grasped Amber’s throat in one hand while he leaned more heavily on the backs of her legs, not wanting to put too much pressure on her neck. Where had girls like this been all his life? All that time he’d been occupied with Katrina—coaxing sweet, gentle orgasms out of her with his fingers and his tongue, her often falling asleep after coming, before he’d even had the opportunity to carefully put himself between her thighs—he could have been savaging and throttling a fit, young girl from the bar, who wanted him to be rough, who wanted to be fucked well and proper.

“Yes,” Amber rasped, wrestling her legs out of his grasp until her calves were resting on each his shoulders. “Harder.”

Ivan faltered for a moment, losing his rhythm as he thrust between her legs. Her throat felt so frail and delicate in his rough hand. He worried he’d go too hard on her, if she egged him on like she that. Ivan started to protest, grumbling breathlessly, “I don’t want—”

“Do it _harder_ ,” Amber grunted, moving her hands atop his shoulders to rake his skin with her claws. She hissed, “ _Fuck_ me, Ivan. You won’t—argh! _I like it. YES._ ”

He tightened his grip on her neck, feeling her windpipe under his palm, and drove into her body with renewed enthusiasm. Ivan felt powerful, like he could fuck forever.

In response, Amber couldn’t stifle a smug, tight smile, even as her eyes rolled back in her head in pleasure. He could feel it as her insides tightened around his cock and he could’ve sworn she got even wetter. Fucking hell. He’d been blacked out for the first part of this. What had he missed? 

He shook his head at her in disbelief. Is this what girls were like, these days, he wondered. Cheeky and mean and bold and submissive, all at once? Is this was internet dating was like? 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daylight is the best disinfectant but the worst cure for a hangover. Ivan Locke struggles to understand the various women in his life and ends up with his arms full of rubbish.

IVAN 

 

 

Every unreturned phone call to Kat, every unanswered text—starting from the first moment he was alone in his hotel room after the baby came, then each subsequent time he checked his mobile for the next weeks—crushed a little bit more of his resolve to do right by Bethan, to be the better man. To be the father his own father wasn’t. He didn’t dare second-guess himself or doubt the decision he’d made, at least not outwardly. Because this was the correct decision. Everyone would come to see, in time, that it was the correct decision to join Bethan in London, to help her with Rosie.

Yet, especially in those early days of being in London, everything weak and small in Ivan was calling to him, telling him to get in his car and drive straight home to Birmingham. Almost like his father had, so many years ago, when he materialized out of nowhere to say that he’d changed, he’d really changed for good now. Standing at Ivan’s door, in his stupid trainers with his floppy haircut, like he was trying to reverse time—maybe do it all better, this go around. Ivan would never stoop to his father’s depths. No, he had his dignity. Barely, but he had it. It was Ivan who redeemed the Locke name against all odds, not his father. Anything that happened after that, including this baby with Bethan, did nothing to change that. The Locke name had been mud back in Wales but Ivan had brought it up to something close to respectable by working hard and doing the right thing. Sometimes—no, _often_ —the right thing is the hardest thing.

Still, the urge to grovel was blisteringly strong. Christ, Ivan even got so desperate in the first fortnight in London that he’d called Katrina’s sister Meghan directly, pleading with her to tell Kat that he wanted to speak with her—just to talk, that he had no expectations beyond a conversation. If there was any chance to talk it out. But, no. No dice. In fact, his sister-in-law had confided that her husband, Chris, someone Ivan had known fairly well for a decade—they’d even had that annual hiking trip when the boys were small—had offered to beat his head in with a shovel, should Ivan come by unannounced and looking for Kat.

But then, after weeks and weeks of waiting, after imagining he would never hear from his wife ever again, the very same morning he’d woken after he’d finally succumbed to getting absolutely and intentionally wasted for the first time in 15 years, it finally happened: Katrina actually returned his call. 

Ivan missed Katrina’s call entirely, because he’d somewhat neglectfully left his phone at the flat while he spent an hour driving around London to air the car out. Bethan would have his arse for that (for leaving his phone, not for airing out the car; what she’d do if she knew about the night before, with Amber, Ivan truly couldn’t imagine). _What if something had happened to Rosie and he’d not had his phone,_ is what she’d say. Bethan still hadn’t begun to trust her own parenting instincts. She would in time, Ivan knew, but she wasn’t there yet. Anyway, it was Ivan’s responsibility to be on-call support, as he’d promised. Him, present—blinding hangover, ratty sweatshirt, dirty jeans, and all; definitely not leaving his phone sitting on the counter.

The lingering smell of the trouble he’d gotten into—a girl called Amber—was still stuck in his beard, but he’d managed to freshen up the interior of the car, at least.

Ivan deftly managed to avoid the Saturday morning chewing-out he expected from Bethan by going straight into the lavatory for a shower. When he emerged from the bath in a cloud of steam, feeling refreshed, his hair gone every which way and hopefully a little less of a green tint to his skin, Bethan was waiting for him. 

She had his phone held out in one hand and little Rosie cradled against her shoulder in the other. Bethan’s face was a baffling mixture of exasperated and fed up. Ivan already felt like he owed her an apology, but he sensed things were about to get worse.

“Ivan,” she said flatly, like she was addressing a stranger. She prodded the phone into his still-damp forearm and he looked at her with confusion, struggling to secure the towel around his hips and receive the phone at the same time. The corners of Bethan’s mouth were turned down, her lips a thin sour line. She explained, “ _Your_ _wife_ has rung you.”

Ivan couldn’t hide his surprise and although he still felt very exposed, he stopped fidgeting with his towel. ( _Her_ towel.) How did she know it was Kat? 

“Oh, has she?” he asked nonchalantly, sounding more casual than he felt. He took the phone from Bethan’s fingers and squinted at it. “Did you speak with her, then, or …?”

Bethan shook her head and released his phone, looking away crossly. “No, of course not. I would never answer your phone. I heard the beeping and saw her name came up, that’s all.” Mobile successfully yet unnecessarily delivered, she was back to using both hands to hold Rosie against her chest. She glanced momentarily at Ivan, half-naked and dripping on her bamboo flooring, and turned to walk back into her bedroom.

Ivan watched Bethan go, careful not to turn his back to her, lest she see the scratch marks that Amber had left all over his shoulders. Some stones on her, turning his inner shame into outer evidence. She’d already pointed out he was still wearing his wedding ring, so why mark him? It infuriated him off and he hoped he never saw her again, the trollop.

He took the phone into the nursery and laid it on the day bed while he dressed, never taking his eyes off it. Honestly, he wasn’t keen to hear the message right away. He remembered that he’d left a sad-sack babble of utterly humiliating rubbish on the house answering machine the night before, when he was in his cups. He didn’t entirely remember what he’d said but it couldn’t have been good. 

Dressed in the same dirty jeans (his options were limited) but with a clean shirt under an old flannel, he sat next to the phone on the bed, took a deep breath and picked it up. He pressed images on the screen until Katrina’s voicemail was playing against his ear.

Her voice sounded cold. Restrained. It reminded him of how she used to speak to his mother, or school administrators. Guarded and stiff. Not ever how she was with him—at least, not until he left.

“Ivan,” Kat began, and his heart seized up immediately. His name in her mouth was all he’d wanted for weeks and now here it was, happening, but not at all like he’d imagined. He felt a latent wave of nausea roll through him. 

She went on, after a pause: “Hi? It’s me. I—fuck, this is a mistake. Ahem. Hi. Ivan … I’m glad you haven’t picked up the phone, actually, because I don’t know if I can speak with you right now. So, I suppose I’ll just speak _at_ you, all right? Just listen. Don’t call. Listen.”

Ivan exhaled, the hand holding the phone trembling a bit. _Yes, Kat, yes—it’s all right. Whatever you want to do: speak at me, yell, shout, whatever. I am here and I am listening._

Katrina sounded like she also took in a deep breath and let it out. Ivan imagined her as sitting on the back steps, for some reason, maybe letting the dog out into the garden to wee and so she might have some privacy. He listened closely for any sounds he could recognize, the desire to be home again welling up in him like a geyser, but heard nothing but her breathing. If she told him to come home, right now, he’d do it. He would. 

Continuing in a low and quiet voice, she said, “I know you want to see the boys. You must. Whatever’s gone on, whatever is happening now … with you in London—or wherever you are—I know you want to see the boys. It’s not fair to keep you apart. Uh, and Sean has collected some of your things and passed them to Donal, who’s been in touch, I hope? That’s fine. We’ll work something out so you can see them, okay, Ivan?”

Ivan’s shoulders slumped at her words. All he could really process, even as she was confirming that he would see his sons, was the word “we.” Who was that, then: “We”? She and him, as it always was? She and the boys?   


Then, maybe because she knew him so well, an explanation for her choice of words: “I’ve put in a call to a family mediator to help us plan a visit.” Her voice sped up and she sounded less reserved: “Because you can’t just … you can’t just _call_ like that, Ivan. It’s upsetting. To me, to the boys … And if you’re drinking again, Ivan. Fuck, if you were drinking … I just—I don’t know if maybe you were just having a bad moment or if you were out and about, having an old-time big night, like you used to. But you can’t just call me like that, going on about the dog, and—” Her voice cracked and she stopped speaking. She cleared her throat and Ivan pictured her: eyes closed and chin lifted, trying not to cry into the phone. He’d seen her do it a million times and could envision it as clearly as if she was in front of him. The memory struck him like a clap to the ears.

_She still cared. God bless it, she still fucking cared!_ Ivan’s heart twisted and he wished to hell that Kat _was_ in front of him. He’d scoop her into a hug and never let go of her. Not for anything. Especially not now that he knew he was still in her heart, sore spot that he might be. For the first time in quite a while, Ivan let himself feel a bit of optimism leak into his pragmatism. He could fix this. If she still cared, he could fix this. If there was something to mend, he would mend it.

“Anyway, Ivan, I’ve given your number to a woman called Janet. A mediator. She’ll contact you so we can arrange a visit. Just the boys and you, though. I’m not—it’ll just be you and the boys. And if that goes well, we can arrange a schedule and talk about some kind of—oh, Christ—some kind of support? Financial, I mean? Ivan, I don’t know how to do this and I can’t believe I’m leaving this message—not just on your phone, but _to you_. It’s been so long already and I push it out of my head every time, but … just hearing your voice last night? I still can’t believe you—this—has happened to us.”

“Us,” she’d said. Ivan dropped his head to his chest and sighed, his eyes growing wet. The pain in her voice was searing. He could feel it, even though the phone, even though the hangover— _especially_ through the hangover. This was his lowest. This was it. Rubbing his face, he didn’t imagine this could get any more painful, but then it did.

Choking on her words meant she was about to let loose with tears, which meant that she would hurry off the line as soon as she could. If only Ivan could’ve reached through the phone to hold Kat, to keep her talking, to kiss away the tears that were about to come … but he couldn’t do shit—not whilst sitting on a stupid flounced day bed in Islington, in someone else’s home, fucked out and hungover from the night before. Anyway, he was busted: Of course Kat would’ve known he’d been drinking when he called. The coil of shame tightened around him.

Katrina’s voice was a throaty wet whisper: “I can’t believe that you don’t live here. Some mornings, I wake up and think it’ll all be a bad dream, but then I turn over and you’re not there and it feels like it’s happening all over again. I’m just so …” Her breath hitched again and he heard a small sob come through in the recording. She was crying. It was a few seconds before she spoke again, her voice now with a colder, more determined tone. “Anyway, I’ll let you go. That’s it. Look for the call from the mediator. We’ll set something up. And, Ivan? Don’t call like that again. Please? I deleted it so the boys wouldn’t hear you in that state. Just—let’s go through the mediator. OK? OK. Well, then, that’s it. Goodbye, Ivan. I mean … uh, bye then.”

 

* * *

 

Ivan listened to the voicemail two more times to file every detail in his mind before he deleted the recording. Regaining his composure, he rubbed any residual expression of sorrow or shame off his face with the damp towel before he went to see if there was anything that he might help Bethan with. At the very least, he should compartmentalize both the events of the night before _and_ the phone call long enough to make Bethan and himself something to eat.

She was in the kitchen, still holding Rosie while struggling to look into the refrigerator. 

Ivan held his arms out and offered, “Here, let me take her. Unless you’d like me to make you eggs while you nurse?”

Bethan shook her head and carefully handed the baby off to him. “I’ll make something, if you wouldn’t mind just patting her back for a while. She needs—”

“To be burped, doesn’t she?” Ivan finished Bethan’s phrase, addressing the baby with the special voice he reserved for small children and young dogs. “I remember,” he murmured. Yes, fully compartmentalized now. Ready to parent. And, he wasn’t so far gone that he didn’t recall burping the boys when they were tiny.

Little Rosie’s attention shifted to his face at the sound of his voice and Ivan held her aloft with both hands, his index fingers long enough to support the back of her head. He marveled at her smallness. She had a full mouth, like him and like his boys, even as babes. With Katrina not in the genetic equation, he could really see how much all three of his children’s features favored the Locke side. But not her eyes. Her eyes were crinkly and serious, like Bethan’s. And the little dimple in her chin, that was her mum’s as well. Ivan didn’t find all babies to be cute, as the rest of the world seemed to, but his little girl seemed exceptionally so.

Next to them, Bethan pulled things out of the fridge before she turned her back on them. Ivan was fully aware that there were questions she wanted him to answer, but as long as Bethan wasn’t asking, he wasn’t offering. Rosie reached out with her tiny hand and gathered a not-inconsequential section of Ivan’s beard into her fingers, yanking hard.

“Oooh, you’re a strong girl, aren’t you? Hurting your poor old dad?” Ivan tilted his head in the baby’s direction as Rosie pulled at his face, so he might shift her into one arm without losing any beard. Why do babies need such fierce grips? Cradling her high against his chest in a crooked arm, he feigned being in great pain, whimpering theatrically at Rosie. Her eyes widened and focused, and he chuckled, “All right, little meanie, out to the garden with you. Let’s have a great big burp.”

Ivan took her into the garden to walk her in small circles, a cloth over his shoulder in case she let loose. After no belching happened, he sat in the patio chair and lay Rose facedown across his lap, supporting her head with one hand while rubbing and patting her tiny back with the other, how his first two babies preferred to be burped.

“Are you supporting her head enough?” Bethan said, suddenly next to him, out in the garden in her dressing gown. Stealthy as a ninja, Bethan was. Ivan nodded. Trying to be patient with an adult was more difficult than with a baby, he thought sourly. She went on, “It’s just that—”

“I’ve got it, Bethan. She’s a good girl,” Ivan interrupted, still patting, trying to coax it out of her. Just like magic, little Rosie burped and ejected her bit of formula. And then another, with even more spit-up. “I’ve done this before. There you go, sweet girl.”

Bethan nodded, murmuring in agreement, “Yes. You have.”

Ivan cautiously lifted Rosie off his lap and took her back into the cradle of his arm, lovingly wiping her little mouth and cheek with the soft cloth. Yes, she was undeniably lovely, his daughter. Even just looking at her lifted his spirits considerably. _Who is the best little hangover cure in London? You are! You are!_

“What is it?” Ivan asked Bethan gently, looking up at her as she loomed over him. He could feel her practically vibrating, bursting with the need to say something. Either that, or she didn’t trust him with the baby.

Bethan sighed, sounding guilty. He was right. She had a question: “What did she want—your wife?”

Ivan nodded, pressing his mouth to the baby’s crown to feel her fine, downy hair against his lips. “Katrina,” he said softly, pulling away a bit. He kept his voice low and spoke as if he were addressing Rosie, even if his audience was Bethan. “That’s her name: Katrina. She wants to set up a time that I can see the boys.”

“Are you going back to her? To _Katrina_ and Birmingham, then?” Bethan blurted tempestuously, stiffening her posture as she moved away from him a step. Stressed, she added, “Is this even about your sons?”

Ivan glanced up at her to shake his head while meeting her eyes for a moment. How could she ask that? He turned back to the baby and continued to speak to Rosie softly: “I am with you, here in London, Bethan. Here, with you and little Rosie girl.”

Another lie, albeit a convincing one. His body was in London, yes. But, in truth, Ivan was all over the place: He was physically in Islington, but he was also in Birmingham in his heart and mind, and sometimes he was even way back in Merthyr Tydfil, wallowing in his memories of childhood, hearing his dad’s drunken rants through the thin walls. Still, Bethan seemed satisfied with his lie and she relaxed her posture. After a few more moments of watching him with the baby, she hummed in satisfaction and wordlessly returned to the kitchen to make their omelets. Ivan stood silently in the garden with Rosie, swaying gently with the baby until she sighed herself to sleep.

 

* * *

 

His former assistant Donal had entirely forgotten to call Ivan, point of fact, and instead drove around with Ivan’s belongings in the boot of his shitbox of a car for a full week. It was Ivan that reached out to him, in the end. As luck had it, Donal would be near London the following Sunday, picking up a friend at Heathrow. He said he wouldn’t mind driving an hour over to Islington to see Ivan and drop off a few of his things. For old times’ sake. Just to say hello.

“We’ll come ‘round to yours, then?” Donal asked over the line.

Ivan looked over at Bethan, sleeping on the couch in a serene little bundle while Rosie enjoyed a stretch and kick on her play mat at his feet. Ivan didn’t want that perpetual adolescent Donal there, tracking mud and the past all over Bethan’s clean floors—much less whatever cretin he’d picked up at the airport. Plus, Ivan couldn’t begin to imagine how he’d introduce Bethan or Rosie: _Yes, Donal, this is my old, platonic girlfriend and our infant daughter and here is the flouncy day bed that I sometimes sleep in. That is, when I’m not failing to get it up for the woman I left Kat for or blackout drunk._

“No, sorry, can’t do it, mate,” Ivan mumbled into the phone. “Not today. Bethan is resting. The baby’s kept us up all night … I’ll just meet you at the pub. It’s nearby.”

Donal snorted, “I hope it’s close, man. I couldn’t find a proper duffel so your stuff’s all just in bin bags. Sure you don’t want me to drop it by? Going to be a bitch to carry. Have to do it over your shoulder like Father Christmas!” 

 

Ivan’s one good (but now very creased) suit, his dress shoes, a half dozen T-shirts, some ragged jeans, an armful of mismatched socks and a few pairs of boxer briefs were in one bag. The other bag held his mail, his dopp kit, an old watch that he hated, his anorak and a winter parka more appropriate for an Arctic expedition than for London.

“What the hell, Donal? _Who_ packed this?” Ivan scowled, peering into the blackness of the oversized bin bag, which he recognized as being from a 30-unit box of industrial bags he’d bought the year before, for what he anticipated would be the next five years’ collection of yard waste at the Birmingham house. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to come down from the house, really. Not a winter parka, surely. And not in bin bags. He’d look like a homeless person, lugging all that tosh to Bethan’s.

Donal shrugged, laughing, and his mate—some childhood friend/idiot from Sligo named Iggy—craned his neck to get a better look. Ivan miserably shoved the bags further under the table but duly thanked Donal for the help. The Squalor Victoria was good and quiet on a Sunday afternoon. Just a few people eating at the bar, watching tennis. The cheeriness of the thin springtime sun streaming in through the windows helped to offset Ivan’s burgeoning feelings of humiliation about being handed bags of his own lifetime accumulation of detritus.

“I think Sean? Can’t be sure. Sean handed it off, though—said that everything was in bags in the attic and someone just threw together what they thought you’d need,” Donal explained. Ivan inwardly perked up at his words. If Kat hadn’t thrown his things away, or set them on fire in some kind of a ritual funeral pyre, that means she’d cared enough to hang onto them for him. Donal brightened, too, changing conversation to his favorite subject: “So, wait, Ivan, you’re drinking now! This is grand. Off the wagon. Thank fuck you are, too, man. Been waiting as long as I’ve known you to buy you a beer, and now I finally can.”

Ivan nodded noncommittally, glancing around at the Vic as if the pub might reveal the truth about his drinking, which was more of the binge variety than the social kind. He played it down, though: “Here and there, but not much. Just to get out of the flat once in a while.” 

“Ivan’s recently had a baby,” Donal said to Iggy by way of explanation, lifting his glass and eyebrows in tandem. He left it at that, and Ivan was annoyed that he’d made it sound so mysterious, inviting more inquiry. 

Sure enough, Iggy immediately responded, ignorant of any subtext, “Nice one, man! Boy or girl?”

Ivan took a gulp of his lager and swallowed it before answering tersely, “Ah, a girl: Rosie.”

“Oh, Rosie, is it?” Donal asked, reaching forward to clink his glass against Ivan’s. “That’s a sweet name.”

Ivan had the sudden irrational thought that Donal was collecting information for Katrina, or for the mediator. Someone who would hold it against him in the courts. He nervously cleared his throat, increasingly uncomfortable with the focus on his affairs, while also trying to dismiss his paranoia. _It was an insane premise._ Ivan was private by nature, true, but Donal was a good enough man who he’d known for many years. He wasn’t a spy. He wouldn’t sell him out.

“Congratulations, again! A little daughter,” Donal mused, giving Ivan an amicable wink. 

Once Donal had a little cider in him—and got over the fact that he was drinking with his old boss, something that had never happened before—he divulged everything down to the finest detail that he’d noticed the last time he’d swung by the Locke house. Katrina had changed her hair. Lost some weight, maybe? Looked good—pretty as ever, but different—and seemed like she was keeping herself busy. Eddie was acting out at school a bit, got into a scuffle at practice, but he was all right. The dog was still a lazy git. Sean was well. Getting taller. Talking about learning to drive, already, and taking care of his mum as the man of the house. 

“No offense, mate,” Donal corrected himself, sheepishly. “You know what I mean. He’s a good lad.”

Ivan nodded and toyed with the edge of the coaster under his now-empty glass. He was on his second; Donal was on his third cider, ever the quick drinker. What was that he said about his wife? “Looked good,” did she? Ivan rankled at the thought of Donal looking at Katrina at all. Plus, Ivan was privately seething that Donal dared to tell _him_ , of all people, that Sean was a “good lad.” As if he didn’t already know! As if he’d had no hand in bringing him up! Hard to feel pride, though, when they weren’t even living under the same roof.

Ivan also wasn’t particularly proud of the fact that he was sitting in a pub with bin bags of old clothes, toiletries and mail on the floor next to him. After so many years—fifteen years, actually—of swearing off pubs in order to raise his family and be a good man, Ivan felt the deep, shameful sting of sitting in his local like a knife to the gut. But, at the same time, the Squalor Vic seemed very much like the appropriate place for a man who got someone other than his wife pregnant and then fragged his own career. Perfect for him, and perfect for a man like his father, too. And probably his father before him. 

But not Sean or Eddie, no. They’d be better men. Ivan would make sure of that.

Ivan put a pin in Donal telling him more about his own bloody family so he might go up to the bar to get another—hopefully final—round of libations. Leaving the boys and his baggage back at the table, Ivan had his elbow on the bar and was idly scratching at the back of his head when he felt someone put a hand on his shoulder in an overly familiar way. 

It definitely wasn’t Donal, who he'd half expected. No, it was far worse.

It was Amber—20-year-old Amber—looking every inch too young for him and a terrible mistake at that—smiling up at him with a wicked grin. She was a overly tarted up for an otherwise casual Sunday at the pub. Ivan hadn’t seen or made contact with her since he’d had her in the back of his car in the middle of a blackout. He visibly blanched at the sight of her and quickly glanced over his shoulder to see if Donal or Iggy were looking his direction. They weren’t; in fact, Donal appeared to be attempting to throw a salted almond in his friend’s gaping mouth. The idiots.

Amber’s gaze traveled over his face and she gave his shoulder a light, admonishing slap. “Hi there, Ivan,” she purred, “Been hoping I’d run into you all week. And here you are.”

Ivan glanced at her, nodding as he pressed his lips together. She was a honeytrap if he’d ever seen one—he just didn’t know her angle. What did she want with him? He couldn’t look at Amber longer than an instant without remembering her as a naked, sweaty, soggy mess beneath him, her ankles practically behind her head, begging him to choke her harder, fuck her harder. Jesus. He wasn’t sure he’d ever come that much, for so long. It was historic, that. 

“Buy me a drink?” Amber asked, her hand moving down his back in a way that would have been friendly if his skin wasn’t already crawling with self-consciousness. Ivan didn’t dare to see if Donal had looked over yet, but he flinched away from the girl’s touch nonetheless. 

“Can’t,” Ivan said curtly, sliding a tenner toward the bartender, who in turn gave him a knowing look—presumably about Amber. Ivan lightly shrugged off her hand. “I’m … uh, with friends. Busy. Sorry.”

Amber’s eyes widened in offense. Ivan gruffly pushed the three full pints together and lifted the triangle they’d formed, turning away from Amber to return to the table. 

When he set the drinks down and took his seat, Ivan looked up to find Donal gawking at him. He’d seen Amber, then. Of course he had, the nosy bastard.

“WHO—” Donal hooted in a stage whisper, elbowing Iggy at the same time as he jerked a covert thumb in Amber’s direction. “IS! THAT! Ivan! You _beast_ , man!”

Both Donal and Iggy were openly staring at Amber, who’d turned around long enough to watch where Ivan had taken the drinks off to before turning back toward the bar. She looked nearly as good from the back as she did from the front, Ivan could fully acknowledge, now that he was mostly sober and able to get a look at her in daylight from a better vantage point than in the back seat of his darkened car. She looked like a juvenile delinquent version of a noir femme fatale: Her skirt was of a modest-enough length but a completely obscene level of tightness, showing off the sweet round curves of her rear and her frankly ridiculous hip-to-waist ratio. Her ankles crossed delicately while she balanced on her toes—in heels? what was the point of that, other than to tantalize him?—to point at something behind the bar. She knew exactly what she was doing. Fuckin’ right, she did. Clearly. She might as well be presenting her arse to the whole pub, like a dog in heat. How had Ivan not noticed until just now that he’d likely been seduced by—practically fallen victim to—what must be the Squalor Vic’s premier seductress? Alcohol had once again turned him into a horny idiot, and he was once again caught red-handed.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he grumbled under his breath, looking away from Amber before his face could give more of his stories away. The lads were still practically drooling over her, giggling like teenagers. Worse, Donal wouldn’t stop theatrically looking between Amber and Ivan, as if he were making some grand connection in his tiny brain. Ivan caught his eye and warned him: “Donal. Stop.”

“Is that—fuck me, is that Bethan!?” Donal whispered back at him, quieter, leaning over the table. “Fuckin’ hell, is it?”

Ivan must have looked aghast, because Donal immediately backpedaled, “No, no, of course it’s not. Bethan’s—” He paused, reconsidered, and changed tack, “Bethan’s with the baby. Sorry, sorry. Who is she, then?”

Ivan shoved the prick’s cider over to him and snapped, “No one. I don’t know. Just some girl? I don’t even know her.”

Which was true. Ivan didn’t know Amber. And wouldn’t. He desperately wished he could just grab up his things and sprint out of there, but doing so would be to admit guilt or shame—both of which he had in spades but would never confess to. Couldn’t tell the truth, yet couldn’t bolt.

His argument of not knowing her was destroyed by Amber herself when she carefully carried four shots of what smelled like whisky to the table where Ivan, Iggy and Donal sat. She was quite the package, Amber. Just a hair past jailbait, with everything done to perfection: glossy red talons and lips, a strategically torn rock tee tucked into that ridiculous pencil skirt, her tiny waist bound by a wide red patent leather belt, her sexy small feet teetering on high heels like some kind of a barroom ballerina.

“These are for you three,” she offered brightly, in her clean southern accent, smiling brazenly at all of them as she leaned over to set the shots down. Predictably, Donal and Iggy gaped at her chest as her shirt revealed a view of her lacy bra. Ivan kept his eyes on her eyes, glaring, furious. She winked at him and picked up one glass for herself, indicating they do the same. “Are you friends of Ivan’s from Birmingham, then?”

Iggy, the blessed bastard, babbled in response: “You a Thin Lizzy fan, are ya?” _Tin_ , he pronounced it. _Tin Lizzy_. He gestured at Amber’s shirt by way of explanation, probably in no small part to excuse himself for staring blatantly at her sweet, small tits. His broad Irish accent was in full effect, indicating that no, they were not Ivan’s friends from up north.

“Oh, god, yes! I love all that old-man music,” Amber chirped, laughing. “Dad rock, isn’t it? I just _love_ dad rock!” 

Donal and Iggy laughed in agreement, picking up their generous shot glasses. She’d looked at him when she said it: _Dad rock_. Fucking hell, she was merciless. Just when Iggy informed Amber as an aside that he, like Thin Lizzy, was _also_ Irish, and had in fact flown over from Ireland _that very afternoon_ , Donal looked at Ivan with amusement, pointing for him to take up his shot, as well. “Come on, Ivan,” he chortled, “don’t be rude. Your friend has brought us shots.”

Ivan immediately snatched up and downed his shot like it was medicine, not taking his eyes off Amber as he did it. She met his glare evenly, keeping a sunny smile on her face. He’d gone and jumped the queue, Donal protested. The three others followed up by taking theirs together. 

“Slainte!” Donal cheered. “To Phil Lynott!” Their three glasses clamored back down to the table in unison and Ivan flinched again, his eyes blinking a little too slowly. He had to get out of there.

Just as Iggy invited Amber to sit with them, Ivan stood up. Whisky was burning down his throat and he suddenly felt too warm. “I have to get back,” he announced, firm and gruff.

“What? _Now_?” Donal asked, looking between Ivan and the full pint of lager on the table in front of him. “You’ve got a full drink.”

“I’m done. You have it,” Ivan instructed him, attempting to sound generous but failing. It sounded more like a threat, especially to someone who was meant to drive back to Birmingham shortly afterward. Glancing at Amber briefly, Ivan mumbled, “Pardon me.” He gestured at her feet, one of which was stepping on the corner of one of his bin bags of belongings. He was close enough to smell her and everything became a disaster in his head. “I just have to …” Ivan ended his statement in a frustrated grunt.

A bag in each hand, he nodded toward the men seated at the table. Tonelessly, to Iggy: “Enjoy your visit.” Then to Donal, with as much sincerity as he could muster: “Cheers for this, mate. Be in touch.” 

He cleared his throat and moved to avoid knocking into Amber with his body or his bin bags. She stepped out of the way just as he grumbled her name in acknowledgment: “Amber.”

Then, thankfully, Ivan was outside, walking as fast as he could manage, burning with fury and embarrassment, trying to keep his semi literal and fully proverbial shit together by hugging the two bin bags to his chest so the plastic wouldn’t rupture and spill his shame all over the street outside the Squalor Victoria.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They say you can never go home again, but that doesn't mean Ivan Locke won't try very hard to do just that. A visit with his sons, an exchange with Donal, and then a conversation with Bethan — all roads lead him back to the Squalor Victoria pub.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: verbal abuse

IVAN

 

During the several minutes of their first tense visitation—at Ivan’s best attempt to suggest a “neutral location,” a Little Chef near Coventry—all three Locke men remained practically mute. Where was Janet the mediator when Ivan really needed her? She’d set up the visitation but she hadn’t told him how to act, what to do, what to say.

Katrina dropped his sons off in front, pulling up right next to Ivan’s car. He watched from inside the restaurant. Before Ivan could even get out of his seat to greet the boys at the steps outside, she’d already pulled out of the car park. She’d gone off to the shops, Sean explained, as he and Eddie sat stiffly opposite from him. Off to the shops. As if it was something that happened all the time: Mum just popping off to pick up a few things for tea while the kiddos visited with their estranged fuck-up of a father. Nothing to see here. Moving right along. Don’t forget the company biscuits!

Amid meaningless chatter and forced normalcy that lasted an eternity for Ivan, they were served their food and Eddie, his 13-year-old—always the more sensitive of the two—abruptly burst into tears. The server had brought him a regular burger instead of the one with the works that he’d ordered, he said. He’d only noticed after the server had left them to it, when he lifted the bun to find no cheese and no pickles. Ivan, surprised, froze for a moment. He didn’t know exactly what to say, and tears had always driven him to retreat. But the tension was broken at last, finally cracked open. Ivan quickly swooped over to the other side of the booth to give Eddie a cuddle. With his arm around the boy, he was able to reach further enough to also squeeze Sean’s shoulder with his hand.

“Aw, love. It’s all right, Eddie,” Ivan murmured as his son sobbed in his arms. This was much more than a burger with no works. These tears had been waiting. Eddie clung to him, bereft, so Ivan tightened his embrace. He soothed, “It’s all right. I’ve got you, Eddie. It’s OK.”

He was just under Eddie’s age when his own father started to disappear for weeks and months at a time. As a young boy, Ivan had been relieved—the less that Dad was around, the less abuse he and his mum had to suffer and wonder. But he’d been such a different boy than Eddie. Eddie was so sweet and easily wounded. He’d never learned to bottle up all his emotions, thankfully. Maybe if he had a good cry now, he could avoid the same fate as him, as his dad, stumped by any emotion other than anger.

Filled with resolve to do this better than his father would have, he made eye contact with both boys, adding, “It’ll be all right soon. It’s strange now, I know, but it’ll be okay. It will. I will fix this.”

Sean’s eyes shone wet as he struggled to hide his emotions, too, so Ivan reached a bit further and stroked his eldest’s hair. He cleared his throat, and spoke, his voice stiff with repressed feelings: “I love you both … very, very much. I’ve probably not told you that as much as I should’ve, but it’s true: I love you. Everything will be okay.”

Ivan held physical contact with them both for as long as he could. Eddie had mostly stopped sobbing and was eventually just sniveling a wet spot onto Ivan’s chest, while Sean stared at his food like it was a holographic image. The server’s return drove Ivan to withdraw his arm, but Eddie remained pressed against him awkwardly.

“Ah,” Ivan coughed, straightening up in his seat. He was the dad. Fixing this was his responsibility. He said, “Yes, sorry, actually—my son ordered the hamburger with the works?”

The server promised to rectify the mistake. Ivan subtly nabbed a couple of Sean’s chips to share with Eddie. The mood had changed, once the tight, tense veneer of “everything is normal” had ruptured. Nobody seemed interested about the why or the what of it, much to Ivan’s relief. Ivan wasn’t sure if Katrina had told them. He decided not to mention anything about his current life unless they asked. Instead, he just asked them about their favorite things: Birmingham City football, acts of daring at school, their cousins and friends, and the dog.

Once they had some food in them and everyone was a tad more relaxed, Eddie cautiously asked, almost as if it was an elaborate riddle, “Dad? Where are you living?”

Ivan answered quickly, casually: “London, Eddie. In Islington.”

Eddie nodded and glanced at his brother. Sean and he must have already discussed it, because Sean issued a terse follow-up question: “He means _where_ are you living? Are you in a hotel?”

Ivan sat back in his chair and pushed a grain of salt around on the formica table top. “Ah,” he sighed. “No, not a hotel. I’m staying with a friend.”

“Your girlfriend?” Sean prodded. That was the information he wanted. He was smart and hard-edged. Like his mother.

Ivan shook his head and looked them both steady in the eyes as he replied, “No, a friend. I don’t know what you’ve been told or what you think is happening, but—”

Sean, always the braver of the two, shrugged and confronted him outright: “At first, Mum said you weren’t ever coming back and then she said you’d gone to London for a while, for work. But then I heard her telling Aunt Meg that you’d …” He held his hands up and raised his eyebrows, like whatever he’d overheard was so obvious, it didn’t need to be expanded upon.

Ivan truly did not want to expand upon it. He could only imagine what Kat had told her sister. He sat silently, feeling wildly ashamed, waiting for the words to come to him. If only a meteor would strike the Little Chef. How would his father have explained this to him as a boy?, he wondered. He’d do the opposite.

“I’ve made a mistake,” Ivan explained quietly. Both boys wouldn’t look at him, now that he’d answered, but he supposed he didn’t deserve their direct attention. He went on: “A very large one. I’ve gone to London to correct it. I’m working there, that’s true. And I _am_ staying with a friend—”

“Do you have a new baby, Dad?” Eddie blurted, finally making eye contact. Ivan’s heart collapsed on itself. Eddie was a sensitive lad, so perceptive, and he took everything so bloody personally. He hated the not-knowing, most of all. Always felt deceived. Even when he was just a tot, he demanded to understand what the dialog in a TV show _really_ meant. It was infuriating at the time but now Ivan could see that it was how he processed difficult concepts.

Ivan nodded slowly. He couldn’t bring himself to actually speak. He looked between both boys, feeling humbled. Sean glanced at him briefly, shocked at his confirmation—maybe that he’d nodded at all—and then looked out the window at the drizzle. Sean took after him too much. He stewed, while Eddie stared at Ivan, awaiting more explanation.

But there was none. There was no explanation for why Ivan Locke had blown up his life. Certainly no explanation he could provide to his sons, as they were both victims and tentative survivors of that explosion.

 

It was raining hard, absolutely coming down in sheets, when Katrina picked up the boys an hour later. Ivan could barely make her out—much less read her expression—through the windows of the breakfast spot and her Corsa’s windscreen. When Kat’s car was out back on the road, Ivan rushed to pay the bill and get back to his car.

He wanted to vomit. Yell. Hit something. Have a drink. He’d held on as long as he could, but now he had to get out of the restaurant as soon as possible, so no one would see him utterly go mad. He’d barely made it through the rest of that conversation with his sons. Eddie had been relentless.

“Is it a boy?” Eddie asked, as though his position were under siege.

“No. A little girl. Her name is Rosie.”

“Can we visit you in London?”

“Not just yet. But I will come to visit you whenever you’d like.”

“Are you and Mum getting a divorce?”

“No. We have a few things to work through, your mum and I, but as I said, I will fix it. Everything will be all right.”

“If you get divorced, will Sean and me have to pick who to live with?”

“We’re … no. No, Eddie. That’s not—no. It’s going to be _all right_ , I’m telling you.”

Ivan sat in his estate car with the motor running, wipers flying across the glass as he wept out of anger, frustration, and shame. He sobbed and heaved like a child for a full 20 minutes before he realized the only person who might actually understand his pain was his own father—and he was a son of a bitch and dead at that, so what was the use of him?

 

* * *

Once a month (minimum; twice maximum), as agreed upon with Janet as a proxy for Katrina, Ivan could be with his boys for few hours. Eventually, when he proved that he wasn’t going to kidnap them or get them tattooed, he was allowed to pick them up (just not from the family house), take them to their football matches and watch them play. That’s what he wanted more than anything. It had been “his thing” with the boys, especially Sean, and he’d missed it dearly. His own father hadn’t shown up for anything of Ivan’s, ever. Not once. Ivan was determined to show up whenever summoned, or whenever he was allowed. In a way, showing up was how he’d distinguish himself from his own father. The old man would have made excuses about how nothing Ivan had participated in merited an appearance. Ivan, however, would spit on his father’s memory: No matter how small the event, if his boys wanted him there, he would be.

Many of the parents that he’d known for years via junior league football no longer spoke to him on the pitch sidelines. Certainly next to none of the mums acknowledged him. It appeared word of his indiscretion was widely suspected, if not strictly known. A couple of the boys’ teammates’ dads greeted him in passing, though. Ivan could tell the ones who knew of the split from the ones who didn’t; the ones who didn’t know asked after Kat, and the ones who did looked at him like a wounded animal.

 _Glad it’s not me,_ their expressions said. _Ivan Locke finally got what was coming to him—the pretentious, ungrateful twat._ Compared to his father, though, Ivan felt as though he was a titan among men. At least he was at the bloody football match, cheering on his sons. At least he was sending money and always picked up when either of his sons rang.

However, Ivan had not been allowed back to his actual house. “This is not your home,” Kat had said that night, and by god, she meant it. Not once to the house he’d paid handsomely into, slaved over, started a family in, and happily shared with Katrina for most of their 15-year marriage. She wouldn’t allow him to come by—even if she wasn’t home—to pick up their sons. She simply wouldn’t have it. She wouldn’t have _him_. He caught a few glimpses of her in those first months of being apart, always through various panes of glass or through the word choices that Janet employed. But Katrina herself wouldn’t look at him or even speak to him unless it was through their appointed family mediator.

She just needed more time, more space. She was too proud to ask for it, but Ivan was confident (though that confidence was waning) that she would come around. In the meantime, he’d drive. And drive and drive. Up to Birmingham, back down to London.

Donal acted as an occasional gopher and an unofficial go-between for Ivan and his family when the situation called for something less official than Janet. He had a rapport with the boys and was more or less friendly with Katrina, so could be counted on. He was a good man to ferry about the items that Ivan actually needed and pass them off to him when he was in Birmingham.

They met—again, unofficially—at Donal’s favorite pub in town, much like they’d met at Ivan’s favorite local in Islington. No Amber in Birmingham, thankfully, and almost no chance that anyone Ivan had slept with would walk in. Besides, the pub was Donal’s home away from home.

Out of perhaps some obligation toward Ivan as his former boss, Donal reiterated many times that he wanted to help out with “the home front” because he felt so bad about what had happened. The more cider he drank, the more he sloppily announced he wanted to help any way he could. Ivan brushed off his pity, prickly at the implication that he wasn’t able to take care of his own business. Better to pretend that Donal was just doing him the occasional favor.

Ivan hadn’t asked any pressing questions about his sons or about Katrina but Donal threw it out there, anyway: He would not act as Ivan’s spy. _How noble, our Donal_ , Ivan thought. Donal said he was neutral, like Switzerland. Or beige. A friend to both Ivan and Katrina—and of course the boys—so he wouldn’t tell tales. But Ivan knew better; if he poured a few more ciders into Donal, he’d talk. He’d sing like he was Julie Bloody Andrews in a mountain meadow.

Donal blabbered for thirty minutes about a new contract he’d landed—rudely complaining about the job as if his reluctant but satisfactory coverage of Ivan’s fuck-up hadn’t added to his CV, as if his new position weren’t a role better suited for Ivan, who was still dismantling old fireplaces in central London—before he asked after Ivan. Specifically, he asked about Amber. And Bethan. And if Amber knew about Bethan, or if Bethan knew about Amber, and if either of them knew about Katrina.

“How _old_ is that Amber, anyway?” He chortled, shaking his head as if he had standards of his own. Ivan was sure, beyond a doubt, that if someone like Amber crossed Donal’s path in the same context in which she’d crossed Ivan’s, he’d be tripping over his own dick to put a ring on her finger.

Ivan looked at him crossly. Sometimes, honestly, all he wanted to do was punch Donal in the crooked teeth. As if he hadn’t heard, he announced, “I’ve got to get back on the road, Donal.”

“How old is Bethan, then?” Donal asked, more brazenly, giving him a wink. Why was he so desperate to talk about this particular subject? “Come on, Ivan. Let me live vicariously, mate.”

Ivan pushed away from the bar, not letting his irritation play out on his expression. Donal relented, looking disappointed, tacking on a quick, shallow apology: “I’m sorry, I’m just curious. You were my closest mate and—I don’t know, man—then you were just gone!”

Cocking an eyebrow, Ivan gave Donal a sound pat on the back. “I was your best mate, was I? Aw.” He gave Donal’s shoulder a friendly squeeze and put a bill on the bar in front of him. “Donal,” he added, sincerely but not without some grim mockery to his words, “You’re now my _only_ mate.”

It was true and revolting. Ivan had never had many friends, but in his early life he hadn’t needed them. He went from getting in fights and staying out all hours to nicking cars and petty thieving back home in Merthyr Tydfil. Then he straightened up and worked job after job after job. He had coworkers, not friends. And then, by some miracle, he had Kat and they started their family. After that, coworkers, other parents. But now he just had Donal, who—by virtue of being not his spouse or coworker—must be his one friend.

The thought nagged at him the whole drive back down to London. 

Looking blearily into the rearview mirror to address the empty seat behind him, “Yes, I’m sure you would love to tell me about all the grand friendships you made, and how they would have killed for you, and you for them. But those are pub mates, you old shit. You nodded hello to them without knowing their fucking surnames. Those are not your friends. Those men were not tested, those men hadn’t had to suffer with you through the hard days. They didn’t see you get sober. They didn’t even come calling when you died. Some friends you had.”

Donal would come to Ivan’s funeral, he was sure of it. He’d be drunk and he’d make a bad joke in front of everyone, but he’d at least mourn him.

 

* * *

“I just want to know that I can depend on you, Ivan,” Bethan said evenly. She was holding both of his hands almost maternally across the small table in her flat. Bethan had joined him in the twilight dimness of her living room as soon as Rosie fell asleep. Her first questions were about Katrina and the boys,—how they were doing, and any plans he had to visit them … or move back. Then that crack about his dependability.

Ivan had only just returned from Birmingham and was feeling quite ragged, so his initial reply was looking at her defeatedly. Didn’t she know? He’d driven up and back in one afternoon just to be with her for the evening meal.

Shaking his head in exasperated confusion, he shrugged. “Of course you can depend on me, Bethan. I’m here in London with you, paying my half. Working. Helping with Rosie, trying to care for you as best I can. I’m not sure how else you might ‘count on’ me.” 

He realized that it sounded cruel, said like that, so he reminded her, “My sons rely on me, as well.”

Her eyes were dark and serious. She replied, “Yes, of course. And Katrina, I’d expect, to the same result. But I need to know that you are fully committed to Rosie.”

“To Rosie,” Ivan raised his eyebrows, feeling slightly insulted. She was using the baby as a shield now. What was it that she wanted from him? 

“Yes, _to Rose_ ,” Bethan insisted, but then acquiesced a bit. She wasn’t being honest with herself, much less him. “Fine,” she added, with resignation, “and to me. You coming back to the flat at all hours doesn’t exactly reassure me that you’re … present. Not for me nor for our baby.”

He’d tried to be quiet but clearly he’d failed, in coming home from the Squalor Vic a few nights a week. He groaned guiltily and apologized, “Jesus, Bethan, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to. I’m—”

“You’re going through it, I know you are. As am I, Ivan.” Bethan sighed, rubbing her thumbs over his callused knuckles. She gave him a small smile, trying to lighten the mood a bit. “We make strange bedfellows, don’t we?”

Ivan looked back at her amicably and nodded in agreement. He hoped he didn’t look as bloody tired as he felt.

“Where do really you go at night?” Bethan prodded gently.

“Running, as I’ve said,” Ivan replied. He snorted with self-deprecation, adding, “Well, jogging.”

“For multiple hours, Ivan? You do?” Bethan didn’t buy it. 

Ivan didn’t want to lie to her and didn’t see any reason to. She didn’t know about his familial problems with alcohol. She was the one who’d bought him the wine, after all. He swallowed and confessed,“I stop by the pub for a pint afterward. You’re asleep with Rosie and I don’t want to wake you by bumping around in a dark flat.”

All true. There were more truths—harder more wounding truths—but his answer seemed to satisfy Bethan.

“No, you don’t need to account for yourself. You’re an adult. Ugh, I’m not making myself clear.” With a deep exhale, she centered herself and went on, “Ivan, I care for you very much. I know I put you on the spot when I was in hospital and they’d given me gas and you were … Everything was happening at once. I know why you didn’t say it back to me. But things are different now. You’re good with Rosie and I know you work so hard, all the time. We’ve been acting as partners, haven’t we? Strange as we are?”

Her voice grew shaky, as if she couldn’t believe she was saying it. “I’m not asking you to—oh for god’s sake— _love_ me, but if you could just be patient. This is very new for me, as well. I’m quite overwhelmed. But I’m trying.”

Bethan’s confession softened Ivan somewhat. She was such a melancholy person. This kind of optimism and honesty must have been difficult for her to disclose. Ivan shifted their hands and squeezed her fingers in reply, nodding. She _was_ trying. He was, too—just not very hard.

“Oh! Also … I’ve bought you a gift,” Bethan added, brightening. “I spent ages putting it together. You’d had it done in 10 minutes but it took me forever. It’s in the back garden.”

Touched, curious, and slightly embarrassed that he had never thought to get Bethan a present—not even once—he followed her lead down the hall to the garden. She flicked on the outside flood light and even with the illumination, it took Ivan several moments to work out what in god’s name it exactly was.

It was a running buggy. Bloody hell.

Bethan beamed hopefully, moving to stand behind it as if she were about to take a jog: “It’s a buggy for runners! Now that you’ve been running so often, I thought perhaps sometimes you might take Rosie with you! I know she’d love it. Don’t you think?”

Ivan nodded dutifully and reached for the canopy. On the list of things he wanted or needed, this item was not on it. Running with Rosie? What would he do—jog a few blocks and then take the baby into Squalor Victoria and set her up in the corner? Maybe after he’d had a few, he could tell her all about how he’d met her mother.

“Do you love it?” Bethan prodded at his silent rumination.

Ivan nodded again, gratefully this time, before leaning over the buggy to kiss Bethan’s temple. 

“Yes,” he lied, “I love it.”

 

* * *

The morning air was chilly and he must have kicked off the duvet in the night, so Ivan pulled Kat, her head cradled in the crook of his shoulder, closer to him for warmth. In return, she cuddled up, one leg over his thighs, her arm across his stomach. Enjoying the added warmth with a sublime half-asleep grogginess that was lightly undercut by a dull headache, Ivan sighed in contentment. His bed. Kat. No alarms, no surprises, as the song went. Just Katrina’s delicate fingers trailing their way from his hip—across the sparse hair covering his lower abdomen and then down a bit lower—until they wrapped around his cock. 

It appeared he’d gotten a little bit hard in his sleep, and Ivan smiled to himself at the realization. His eyes still closed, he relented to the sensation. It was a dream, perhaps, that got him worked up, but this was even better. If they could manage to be quiet about it, the dog wouldn’t wake up to bother anyone, and the two of them could finish in plenty of time before his alarm would sound. Dimly sorting through this dreamy logic, Ivan relaxed. He was home again.

Before he knew it, Katrina was shifting slightly, the sound of the mattress and sheets creaking and rustling under the weight of her knee and hip as she moved over him. Then her mouth was taking him in. Such an otherworldly pleasure, being woken this way—soft, warm, wet suction, pulling him into full erectness. Kat’s hand stroking him at the base of his cock. Her other hand lightly raking the underside of his balls. Ivan was nearly swooning at the pleasure. What a gift, Kat’s beautiful, broad mouth, that talented tongue, those elegant fingers. He’d missed this.

“You spoil me, love,” Ivan whispered, moving his hands to Kat’s shoulder, feeling her move up and down as she slowly licked and sucked his whole length. Him filling her mouth, she’d swallow him whole before pulling back in cool retreat. Then, her mouth was just at the tip, sucking for a moment, lazy tongue loops around the head, before she tongued the small slit at the end of his length. Ivan luxuriated in her attention, shivering slightly in pleasure. He released his hands to stretch his arms by his ears, eyes still shut against what would surely be the glare of morning and the bane of his burgeoning headache.

Another rustling noise and more creaking from the mattress, and by some miracle of grace and generosity, Kat was seated on top of him. Settling slowly, onto his cock, bit by bit. The slowness of it drove Ivan to full arousal and he moved his hands to settle on each of Katrina’s knees. Her sex was soaking wet and warm, a worthy replacement for her mouth, so he didn’t begrudge her keeping the blowjob short. She was so tight around him: first squeezing the head of his cock, then a nudge deeper, and then all the way down the shaft until they were fully joined at the pubis. Straddling his hips, Kat raised and lowered herself onto him slowly, her breathing ragged and uneven, the muscles of her thighs flexing and contracting.

“ _Fucking hell,_ Kat,” Ivan released a deep, gratified sigh. It felt so good, better than it had in ages. So good that his heart sped up its pace in a rush to deliver even more blood to his cock, which woke up more quickly than he. But what a way to be roused. He smirked a bit as his eyes cracked open to take in Kat at her finest, riding him. _Waking me up like that, with her mouth. Rock hard now. She knew what I—_

Slowly gyrating on Ivan’s cock, she came into view. Ivan let out a surprised, confused grunt that quickly turned into a groan when he realized what he’d done.

_Not Kat. Not fucking Katrina!_

AMBER.

_AMBER. Again, you stupid fuckwit!_

Amber, with her red hair all tangled and her snow-white skin, was stark naked and fucking him with a leisurely but confident rhythm that had him already straining to get into her more urgently.

Slightly increasing her pace on her own accord, she bent over Ivan’s torso to closely whisper, with no small measure of amusement, “Did you just call me Kat?” 

Ivan didn’t answer out of pure dazedness, but his visibly stunned face flushed with embarrassment at the mistake he’d made. _Fucking hell._ Instead of responding, he moved his hands to grip Amber’s hips in an attempt to drive himself deeper into her core. 

He should stop. He knew he should. He shouldn’t be there in the first place, surely, but now that he knew he was, he really should stop. But it felt so good.

It hit Ivan, then: He’d blacked out again, and badly, this time. No memory of how he got where he was. He could recall, however, the hours before the blackness—lacing up his trainers to go for a jog after that strange conversation with Bethan, after that visit with his sons—knowing that he shouldn’t go out into the world in that sort of mood. He shouldn’t go for a run, he shouldn’t go for a pint at the Vic, and he definitely shouldn’t have let Amber buy him a shot. He knew it the whole jog there and he knew it when he bought his first drink: _This was a shit idea._

But he’d done it anyway, hadn’t he? It was also probably a bad idea to cage his arms under Amber’s slight shoulders to hold her chest to his while he thrust himself up into her with more force. He should stop.

“Mm, yes! Ivan, that’s so good,” Amber moaned, raising her pelvis up just enough that he had to work to stay inside of her, but not far enough that he didn’t hit the soft yielding surface at the apex of every deep jab into her.  

He wasn’t wearing a condom. He should stop.

“Who’s Kat?” Amber pressed annoyingly, obviously amused by Ivan’s lack of response. She was baiting him and he knew it. He really shouldn’t respond. He should, instead, stop.

“Shut up,” Ivan hissed, and she responded by taking his earlobe into her mouth to bite it sharply. Ivan instinctively jerked his head away from the girl, withdrawing his right arm from between them give her a firm slap on the arse. 

“Oooh!” Amber squeaked. This was play time for her. Ivan felt like a fool. Urging him on, she purred, “Was that a warning shot? Am I going to be in trouble?”

He wasn’t drunk. He had no excuse. He should stop.

Ivan smacked her soft arse again, harder this time, the sound a sharp, abrupt noise in her quiet room. “Stop talking, I swear to god,” he choked out, desperate to fuck her harder, now that he’d felt her sudden clench around him when his palm had landed on her arsecheek.

Amber stopped torturing him by hovering over his hips, finally reciprocating his upward thrusts with her own downward momentum. They kept up with each other for a moment, surging toward each other in a complementary way that reverberated through the mattress and into the groaning bed frame. Her breasts bounced with every impact, hypnotizing Ivan.

It felt too good. He really should stop.

“Oh, Ivan,” Amber teased, her tone turning into a cheeky taunt. She _wanted_ to be in trouble. “Is Kat _your_ _wife’s name_?”

Ivan really should stop, he knew—the phrase kept running through his mind—but at that flippant comment, he knew he wouldn’t stop until he’d absolutely ruined her. Grimacing in quick anger, in one movement he pulled Amber’s hips off him and bodily lifted her off him as he climbed to his knees. She squealed and made an attempt to grab onto his shoulders, but before she could get any purchase, he’d tossed her back onto the mattress. Amber bounced a bit before coming to rest on her knees, looking very fucking proud of herself.

When she petulantly flopped down until she was on all fours, she lifted her arse up like she was assuming the bloody position for a spanking. “It is, isn’t it? Your wife?” she laughed, wiggling her hips at him. “I’m really in trouble now, aren’t I?”

He should stop. 

A red film of rage washed over his vision and instead of stopping, Ivan grabbed the back of her hair and manhandled her until she was lined up for him. She shrieked when he pushed back into her. After just a few firm thrusts, she raised up so she could grasp the headboard in front of her, grunting with his every impact. Her breath coming in short, broken gasps, she let him fuck her for a bit before she whispered harshly, “Fuck my arse, Ivan. Please—like you did last night. I want you in my arse again.”

Ivan almost lost it, truly. It was as if he’d been smacked. His rhythm was demolished from the shock. He almost laughed, it was so absurd: He’d done _what_?! Last night? How bloody drunk had he been? 

Ivan shakily steadied himself by planting one hand at the top curve of her arsecheek, right where it met her arching back. After a pause, during which he considered the merits of _not_ stopping, Ivan jerked on the fistful of red hair he had in his grip. Amber let out a deep, disjointed moan and writhed against him. 

Twisting her head to gain access to her ear, he snarled with sincere determination, “Stop _fucking_ talking, you _fucking cunt_.”

She liked that.

He should stop. He would not.

 

His head finally properly throbbing, at best half-asleep after the staggering release he’d left inside Amber, Ivan opened his eyes again and tried to get his bearings: gray light filtering in through unfamiliar curtains, the sound of a bin lorry rumbling beyond the window, a bed with him sprawled out in it, naked as a robin, sticky, and somewhere, the soft muffled sound of a phone’s alarm. 

“S’yours,” Amber offered, her voice a raspy whisper. 

“Hrm?” Ivan struggled to extract himself from Amber’s limbs, acting out of rote reaction. His eyes were beginning to adjust at relatively the same rate that his brain was starting to process what had happened. He’d blacked out. He’d fucked Amber on accident, and then very much on purpose. He’d ravaged her, come in her arse, and then he’d taken a nap.

“Your _alarm_ , Ivan,” Amber said peevishly, lifting herself onto one elbow. With slightly more daylight in the room, he could see she’d taken her makeup off at some point. He was mortified to realize she looked even younger without it. 

“Fuck.” He pushed Amber’s leg off him roughly and sat up to swing his legs off the side of the bed. His head was swimming as he scanned the dim floor for his clothes, following the tinny sound of his phone’s alarm tone. He grabbed the cuff of one leg of his joggers and pulled the whole lot onto his lap as he dug for his phone. It read 5:30 a.m. when he silenced the alarm. His alarm didn’t go off on weekends, which meant this was a workday.

What had he fucking done? Moreover, why had he done it _at least twice_?

“What is wrong with you?” Amber objected, reclining against the headboard to watch Ivan wrestle with his joggers, which were still half inside-out, as if he’d taken them off in a rush while absolutely shithammered. Where were his bloody _pants_? 

“I have work, Amber,” he explained flatly, mirroring her tone and standing up to get a better vantage point from which to locate the rest of his clothing: trainers, hooded sweatshirt … wallet? Still in pocket. He added, mostly to himself, “I can’t do this.”

“You said you’d call out today,” she protested again, whinging like a child.

Ivan looked over his shoulder to glower at her. What an annoying brat. Now that his eyes had acclimated further, he could see that Amber continued to taunt him by running her hands over her hips and thighs, languid as a cat stretching in the sun. She repeated her statement, reminding him of things he didn’t remember: “That’s what you said last night. That you’d call out.”

“I did not,” he grumbled dismissively. He would have never said that. “I don’t do that.”

Amber snickered, unconcerned. “Um, yes, you did.” Now that she had his attention—annoying as she was, she was difficult to ignore—Amber moved one hand to her sex and the other stretched across the bed toward him. He gawked at her for a second, watching her play with herself, losing himself for a fleeting moment before he snapped back to reality. She spread her knees wide apart as she stared at him with half-lidded eyes. “You said you’d call out sick and you said you’d spend all day in bed, fucking me. Do you not remember that, then?”

Oh, sod it. Honestly, he’d go without his shorts. Ivan tore his eyes away from Amber and pulled on his joggers. What sort of pussy magic did this girl have that made him forget himself in these ways? He would have never said those things when sober. What sort of no-account prick did he turn into when he’d had too much to drink? And then, worse, once he’d sobered up. Jesus. Ivan couldn’t wait to get away from the sight of her.

Turning a bit more sour, Amber narrowed her eyes. “Do you not remember _anything_ about last night?” She looked a little disappointed. It seemed he’d really missed out. Ivan didn’t say anything; he just pulled up the waistband of his joggers before he sat on the edge of the bed to tug on his socks while she went on.

“You don’t remember tying me up, then? _Or_ fucking me up the arse? I mean, the first time.” She giggled and reached out with her leg to prod him in the hip. “God, you were _mental_ , Ivan. You’re fucking wild. I love it. You fuck me _perfectly_.” 

Had he really done all that? And then woken up and gone right back in? Was that even sanitary? The whole evening was a big muddy alcoholic blur. 

Amber went on, boasting, “Oh god, Charles even knocked on my door to make sure I wasn’t being murdered, you had me screaming so loud!”

Shaking his head as if it would inoculate him from the words she was saying being true, he finally responded to her, grumbling: “Who the fuck is Charles?”

_Please, lord, do not let Charles be Amber’s father._

“My roommate? Charles? We smoked with him when we came in?” She was incredulous. That was age 20 for you. Couldn't imagine the blackouts and hangovers of someone almost twice her bloody age.

“No,” Ivan barked, finally fed up. He fought to keep his voice down, but the rage was burbling just under the surface. And his head was killing him. “I don’t remember that and I don’t remember coming home with you. This has GOT to stop, Amber. I can’t keep—”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” Amber interrupted, closing her knees with abrupt sullenness. “I KNOW, Ivan. You’re _married_. So fucking what? You think you’re the first married guy I’ve fucked?”

Ivan stood up, furious. Glaring down at her on the bed, he barked, “I’m a grown fucking man, is what, Amber. Married has nothing to do with it.” 

How true that was! And how pathetic. Marriage had nothing to do with it, indeed. Ivan was livid, with own his admission as well as the smug reaction on her pretty young face.

“Whatever. You’re not even that old,” Amber retorted, somewhat shakily. She was losing her nerve. “I’ve had—”

Ivan, out for blood, interrupted with a sarcastic snort, “Oh yes! I’m sure you’ve had plenty of old dick. Try a little harder, won’t you? Fucking hell.”

Amber was on full alert, sitting up in bed to glare defiantly back at him. But when she spoke, her voice was a thin tremble: “Oh _fuck you_ , Ivan. You’re hot but you’re a bloody idiot if you think you know the first thing about me.”

Ivan could see she was about to cry, but she wasn’t quite yet, so he couldn’t stop himself from adding to her misery. “Fuck _me_? Really? Thought you said I fucked you perfectly. No? Did you not say that just seconds ago?” He knew he was being cruel. Combative for no reason. He knew he should stop. But yet, all the rage that was simmering under his skin was finally coming off of him like steam. And it felt good. Almost as good as coming.  Almost.

He shook his head and sneered at Amber, adding, “You think I can’t tell why you want me to fuck your arse? You’re a fucking child, playing at being a bar slag. Why don’t you go to some other pub and find someone your own age to play with your blown-out cunt, little girl?”

Amber’s posture changed entirely as she crumpled under his words. Ivan stared at her, breathing hard. He found himself hating her, hating himself, and pitying her—all at the same time. She was nothing. Less than nothing, especially to him. At least Bethan was a likable coworker when he’d gone to bed with her, when he’d cheated on Katrina. Who the fuck was Amber to him? No one and nothing. He'd wasted enough time on her.

“You’re a fucking monster and I hope your bloody cock rots off,” Amber wailed, as the tears finally surfaced. A ragged sob broke out of her and she followed it with childish shout: “I fucking hate you!”

Ivan almost broke at the sight of her tears. Naked and crying, she looked so small and fragile. She was just a young girl, under all that vampery. He should have stopped himself. He didn’t mean any of it, not in earnest, and she didn’t deserve it. But it was too late now. He’d done it and there was no going back. There was no fixing it.

“That makes two of us, then,” Ivan said flatly. Then he turned his back on Amber, and, hoody in hand, made his exit.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katrina was Ivan's wife of 15 years—before he ruined everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Katrina Locke: Ruth Wilson (https://goo.gl/images/XEtnMm)  
> Ivan Locke: Tom Hardy  
> Sean Locke: Tom Holland  
> Eddie Lock: Bill Milner

KATRINA

 

 

Katrina had a list going. A physical, handwritten list of all the things she wouldn’t miss about Ivan fucking Locke, and at the top of it was his bloody obsession with concrete. Her entire house was covered in a fine layer of silt for over a decade. But no more. No more chipping away at his footprints that had memorialized the rough tread of his lug soles on her kitchen tiles. No more nagging him to take off those same boots before he stomped footprints all up the stairs. No more buying of house slippers that he’d never wear. Goodbye to all that.

Next on her list was Ivan’s infuriating rigidness, especially when it came to the boys, the house, his car, or her own affairs. He was a bossy, petty tyrant—or could be, when he wanted—with a long list of mostly arbitrary rules he expected everyone to instinctively know and follow. At least if they wanted his approval. These rules functioned as a code of sorts, a code that he lived by when it suited him. Like the time she offered a guest some chocolate biscuits before checking to see if they had any. When they didn’t, Ivan went off on a tangent like a real shit, saying that she mustn’t ever promise something that she couldn’t then deliver. Pretty rich, coming from him, considering that he’d promised her an orgasm that very morning and very much failed to deliver. That contradiction of his code was forever linked in her mind.

After that on the list of things she wouldn’t miss about Ivan came his fucking accent. Not his Welshness—that was fine. Couldn’t be helped. She even found it charming in the early days! But the accent he wound up with wasn’t the one he’d been issued by his mum, that was for sure. He certainly didn’t speak like that when she first met him in her hometown of Birmingham, all those years ago. It was rougher, no smooth edges, no sing-song lilt. Ivan was working-poor Welsh. Someone who got in fights at football matches and knew how to get into a locked car. He certainly didn’t yet sound like bloody Richard Burton, orating from on high.

Katrina would be his secret keeper, the only one who knew that his newly refined way of speaking was a put-on. Ivan trained himself to speak that way so people would assume he’d received advanced degrees—instead of working his way up from being a lowly concrete farmer to king and high lord of the concrete farmers. His reinvention suited him, though. She had to admit that she preferred the improved version. She never would have have married him if he’d dragged all his ghosts from Wales with him.

Kat added to the list when something new occurred to her: Ivan’s horrible tribal tattoo from 2002, his obsession with nasty porn that he thought she didn’t know he watched. The cheesy necklaces that he wore like totems. The wonky front tooth that stuck out just a bit further than the rest. His skinny, bandy legs. Those absurdly large lips. Ivan was, otherwise, so beautiful, so ridiculously good-looking, that she found that his minor physical flaws—barely even flaws, really—were rather charming. Right up until he’d confessed as to why he wasn’t coming home, she’d loved even his pettiest defects dearly.

Right, then. More list items: No eating in the car. Early bedtimes. Didn’t believe in sunscreen. Thought dentistry was a scam. No interest in cinema. Wouldn’t dance if his life depended on it. A preoccupation with his arsehole of a father, long after his passing. And Ivan’s inability to let loose and just have fun for once in his damned life.

Actually, Katrina supposed, Ivan _had_ done that, after all: let loose; had fun. Just not with her.

For that matter, Katrina _also_ wouldn’t miss how he fucked some slag in Croydon, and put a baby in her, and then had come home and fucked her, his wife, absolutely speechless—a rarity, by that time—only to, months later, abandon her and their sons flat on all their arses so he might play house with the Croydon woman.

After everything went to shit with Ivan, Katrina didn’t stay adrift for long. No one would let her. Instead, she experienced something of a personal renaissance: She got her Pilates instructor license and taught classes four or five days a week; she used her nutrition counselor certification to go into business for herself; and she cleaned and reorganized the entire house. She also established a weekly girls night out with her sisters and her friends, who were always game for emotional support. Anyway, Sean and Eddie were more than old enough to look after themselves for an evening, here and there. They even encouraged her to have a big night on those evenings that she really didn’t feel much like being out in the world.

All right, fine. It wasn’t all Stella getting her groove back. The first two months after Ivan left, she sobbed her eyes out every night. Positively drained herself dry of every tear. She also wrote reams of heartrendingly sad and embarrassing rubbish in her journal. _How could he? What was love? Where had she gone so wrong? Why wasn’t he trying to win her back? And who the fuck was Bethan!?_

It was when Ivan called and left a drunken, blubbery message on the machine, however, that something inside Katrina finally snapped. So, Ivan was drinking again. He’d regressed. All that work they put into his sobriety, gone. This was not enjoying a couple of lagers while watching the game. This was “calling your ex and babbling into your mobile, begging her to call you” drinking. He’d said he’d never do that, drink heavily again. He’d promised her, years ago, but now he was. So it was over, then. Done.

Then again, he’d _also_ said in front of a minister that he wouldn’t stick his cock in random Croydon women. Well, not specifically _that_ , but his wedding vows were quite clear on the “honor” bit. Drinking and cheating and more drinking: It really was over between them. Katrina had no interest in caring for _three_ adolescents, one of whom was her nearly 40-year-old husband. So, she’d engaged a mediator, Janet, who would connect with Ivan so Katrina didn’t have to. They’d get through the next few years—coordinating the raising of their boys, facilitating visits, support payments, filing for divorce, all that—with outside help.

That was Janet. Janet helped—for a fee, yes, but it was worth the cost 10 times over not to have to interact with Ivan in his new life. If Kat so much as heard his new baby cooing in the background, she was liable to lose her mind. She’d always wanted a daughter, Katrina had, growing up with her sisters, but she’d had two boys instead. They were fine sons, but part of her still yearned for a girl. And now, some other woman had borne a daughter for Ivan. She shed some tears over that, as well. Every time she thought she was done mourning her marriage, something would crop up and she’d go right back to moping.

The baby’s name was Rosie, Katrina learned from Donal. Donal had come over to help clear a dead tree out of the garden and afterward, over coffee, he’d casually shared news of how Ivan was doing in London: working demolition again, living with that woman and their daughter, jogging a bit, spending loads of time “socializing" with too-young girls at a bougie pub in Islington.

“Blokes who look like Ivan don’t get lonely. He’s fine,” Donal opined, shrugging. He added, self-deprecatingly, “Not guys who look like me. I’m always lonesome! I’m always single!”

Katrina simply nodded, even though her heart felt like it was going to explode. Donal hadn’t a clue. Ivan Locke was the loneliest man she’d ever met. It didn’t matter if he was handsome. He was just a lonesome person, if you scratched he surface. He’d caught it from his father, and his father’s father before him. It was the Locke curse.

After that conversation with Donal, however, there followed two months of sustained, white-hot anger for Katrina. While Ivan was getting drunk and going to bed with millennials in London—cheating! on the woman he’d cheated on her with!—Katrina funneled her energy into something a bit more constructive. She used her hatred of Ivan, along with her own shame and frustration, into getting into the best shape of her life. Her “revenge body,” her sister Meghan called it. It wasn’t fair that Ivan had squandered the best years of their lives—of her life—by being a selfish prick. She decided that she’d have even better years without him.

 

Katrina finally consented to see Ivan in person near the end of their first four months apart. Eddie was slated to receive an award for academic excellence and she decided it was finally fine if both his parents were in same room, breathing the same air. Katrina felt stronger than she had in months, and resilient. She could handle anything. Besides, her boys’ health and happiness were paramount, and they needed their dad there. The separation had been so hard on them, and carrying that guilt around wasn’t doing Kat any good. She wanted to know that she and Ivan could set aside their problems in order to parent together.

She spotted Ivan before he saw her. Immediately, she realized that this was probably a horrible mistake. Too soon. She wasn’t at all ready to be near him, but now it was happening and she had no choice but to see it through. Ivan was dressed well: wearing clean dress shoes, his navy suit trousers and a collared shirt she didn’t recognize. His hair appeared to be freshly cut but his beard was unruly, bordering on feral. _He was such a mountain man without someone to look after him properly_ , she thought dismally. _I would have never let him get away with that beard_. When she saw him, Ivan was in the middle of earnestly shaking the hand of another proud dad, with his other hand gently clapping a very chuffed-looking Eddie on the back. 

He looked … he looked like Ivan. Like her husband, like her true love. Katrina’s heart sank. This was a terrible misjudgment of what she could handle. Too late now.

The other parent saw Kat approaching and quickly excused himself, leaving Ivan looking slightly bewildered at his hasty exit. Ivan turned his head to see where the other man had been looking, luckily setting eyes on her just _after_ she’d finished straightening her skirt. She pasted on a fake smile and took a deep breath to offset the nerves she felt. When Ivan actually made eye contact with her, realizing that he knew her, whatever composure he’d just had in his expression completely abandoned him. He looked … wounded.

Eddie bridged the gap between them, bless him and his heartfelt enthusiasm, leaving Ivan to stand alone and stare at her as she approached. And he did stare. Blatantly.

“Mum!” her 13-year-old enthused, his voice ending in a pubescent squeak. He was so happy, it put her stomach in knots. He took her hand and let her to where Ivan waited. “Dad said he’d take us out for barbecue afterward! He said anywhere I wanted and I said I wanted to eat ribs! Can I go? Please?”

“Of course, love! It’s your night,” she smiled, giving Eddie a little side-squeeze on the go before they both came to a stop in front of Ivan. Much shorter than him, even in her highest heels, Kat put on a brave face and looked up at him. “Hi, lo—” she began, out of habit. She quickly turned the word on its ear with a well-placed cough: “Ahem—Ivan. Hello. So glad you could come up.”

Kat thought, _Oh, he looks tired._ There were dark circles under his eyes and more wrinkles in his forehead than she recalled. He had a new baby, so it made sense. Sleepless nights. But, other than that, any tiredness notwithstanding, Ivan’s eyes were clear, bright, and shining at her as he looked at her like he’d been caught in headlights. He looked fit, in general, she noted, slightly disappointed. _Jogging must've offset whatever pudge excessive drinking put on his belly_ , she thought, as he leaned in to take her arm in greeting. 

She didn’t think socially awkward Ivan would go for a kiss on the mouth—not really his style. Then again, maybe his style had changed! Katrina hastily turned her head to offer her cheek, just in case. He pressed his lips against her cheekbone, slow and firm. Just at the point when it began to turn into an indecently long duration for a public kiss, Kat felt the soft breath of his exhale on her skin and felt his lips as vibrate slightly he hummed a low note of appreciation. 

Pulling away from him slightly, and struggling to keep it together, Kat patted Ivan on the shoulder— _there-there, that’s quite enough._ She watched as his posture crumpled slightly under her dismissive touch.

“Hello, Katrina,” he said softly, still holding her upper arm with a gentle firmness. 

The skin on his hands had gone rough again, for the first time in years, but his nails were clean. And he was still wearing his wedding ring. Maybe he’d just put it back on for the night, the fool. 

Ivan’s eyes flicked from her hair to the severe points of her new heels, and he looked almost pained as he murmured, “You look … you look absolutely stunning.”

Kat certainly felt stunned, herself. One doesn’t spend 15 years arse over teakettle in love with a man to just turn around and reset everything with 4 months of pilates and no carbs after noon—even if that man _had_ murdered her heart. She’d forgotten, in such a short time, how good he smelled. Those subtle one-note noises he made when he was pleased. The glint of ginger hairs in his beard. He was the most gorgeous man in any room he entered and that had not changed since their breakup.

“Mum’s been teaching pilates, Dad. She’s, like, _really_ good at it. She can do a handstand, too!” Eddie boasted on her behalf and Katrina, momentarily broken free of whatever magnetic pull that Ivan had pulled her into, rolled her eyes and blushed in response. 

Ivan hadn’t taken his eyes off her, but he did remove his grip on her arm when Eddie bust loose with the compliments. He nodded with exaggerated seriousness for Eddie’s benefit, sending a toneless whistle out from between his pursed lips: “Whew, can she? I believe it. I’ve just felt her muscles.” He leaned toward her again, lowering his voice to ask in his wickedest, most quietly flirtatious way, “Can you? Do a handstand, Kat? … In those shoes?”

Katrina shook her head, embarrassed, feeling extremely foolish and obvious, like every thought she had racing through her mind was plainly evident on her face. Her body felt like one big raw nerve, being that close to Ivan again. She was also fairly sure she’d ovulated when he’d commented on her new heels, which she’d bought purely to torture him with their sexiness. She knew his weakness for over-the-top, hyper-feminine footwear, and she exploited it.

 _Well done, Kat,_ she thought, taking a step away from Ivan in the interest of self-preservation. _Fucking hell, this was a huge miscalculation._

 

Sean met them at Eddie’s school shortly after the awards ceremony, full of apologies for being late, but absolutely beaming when he saw his dad. They drove to dinner in separate cars—Kat alone with her panic attack and damp knickers in her Corsa, Ivan in the BMW with the boys—but reconvened in the waiting area in the front of the restaurant. The boys each grabbed a menu from the hostess podium and started arguing over how many ribs the other could eat, if given unlimited time and access. Kat stood slightly away from them, digging in her purse so she could set her mobile to silent. Her sister had been texting her furiously for 20 minutes, doling out advice on how to interact with her estranged husband. That had added to her anxiety in the car on the drive over, her phone dinging every few seconds.

Ivan moved to her side as she rummaged in her bag. He whispered, “Kat. We need to talk. Please.”

Her sister Meghan had advised her to not look at him, if it was making it more difficult for her to be an utter bitch. That was one of her last bits of advice before Katrina exited her car to head into the restaurant: “DO NOT LOOK AT HIM. BE A BITCH. DO NOT LET HIM GET YOU ALONE.”

She was a good sister, Meg. Kat didn’t look at Ivan when she said, flatly, “We’re talking right now, Ivan.”

Ivan placed his hand against the small of her back to usher her forward as they all followed the hostess to their table, the boys out of earshot. It was surely habit for him, he’d always at least had the mannerisms of a gentleman, despite not actually being one. She fought the urge to squirm and race ahead to join her sons, a few paces ahead. Ivan was on her like it was old times and they were still together. Kat found it difficult to concentrate on walking. _These shoes._

“ _Alone_ ,” Ivan growled into her ear. “I need to speak with you, Kat. Just us. Please, for fuck’s sake.”

Kat steeled her resolve and said, “I don’t think so,” right before arriving at their table. She was careful to sit next to Eddie and across from Sean, with Ivan diagonally across. She didn’t want to be in close proximity to him. She couldn’t trust either of them to be within reach of each other. Unfortunately, that also meant that she had full sight of his face as he waited until everyone was seated before he sat down with a groan.

That groan was for her. She recognized it. She knew what it meant.

Kat made it through the dinner but only just. The boys had a great time, eating absurd amounts of meat, smearing their faces with barbecue sauce and daring each other to try the hottest hot sauce. Kat could barely eat, she was so nervous. She picked at a bit of mac ’n’ cheese and sipped at a glass of pinot grigio. Ivan was cheery with the boys, engaging with them, making his terrible dad jokes, but as soon as the boys’ attention went elsewhere, he was burning holes into her with his eyes.

“How’s the baby?” Katrina blurted out, wanting to expose him a bit, knock him down a few, maybe. When she heard it out loud, though, she realized it sounded bitchier than intended. Oh well. She knew he’d told the boys more about London, which was good because she was sick of hiding the truth from them for so long.

Ivan was stunned for a moment and paused, but then continued chewing his food methodically, nodding all the while. He took a drink of water before he responded, “She’s good! She’s—well, she’s fine.” He smiled a little, probably at the thought of her. “You know: babies.”

Kat nodded solemnly, squirming a bit. Ivan wasn’t squirming. WHY wasn’t Ivan squirming? He should be the one to squirm. 

Eddie piped up, completely devoid of any malice, happy to know a scrap of information: “Her name is Rosie, mum.”

She widened her eyes and forcing a smile. “Rosie? Aww! Cute.” With a sadistic look at Ivan, she added, “Do you have a photo of her?”

It was a challenge. Ivan looked uncomfortable and Kat was finally gratified. That was the squirm she was looking for. _Yes, yes, Ivan: Show your doting sons a photo of the baby that took you away from them. Let’s all fawn over your illegitimate child._

Ivan hemmed and hawed for a moment, seeming genuinely hesitant to produce photographic proof that he’d fucked someone else and made a baby. But then he reluctantly withdrew his phone from his pocket and navigated to his photos. He passed the mobile to the boys first and they perfunctorily glanced at the photo. Teenagers don’t give a toss about babies, home-wreckers or not. Ivan finally offered the phone to her. She hesitated for a moment, then took it.

Rosie was lovely. Kat had to admit, she was a beautiful little baby. Her mind immediately went wild, however, searching Rosie’s small features for whatever was not from Ivan. In her imagination, Bethan—the woman who took Ivan from her—alternated between being a shriveled old crone and a stunning supermodel. Going off the tiny baby’s features, there was no indication of which image was correct. In fact, the baby looked just like Eddie when he was her age. 

“She’s very sweet. Looks like—” she started, glad that it came out sounding gracious. Could’ve gone either way.

“Eddie!” Ivan finished, smiling. “I know. Just like Eddie. I thought so, too.”

There was no other option but to agree. _Those strong Locke genes_ , she thought, as Ivan reached out to take his phone back. That wedding ring. Why wasn’t it burning a hole through his skin?

After Ivan paid the bill and walked them back to the Corsa, he hugged both boys tightly and announced that they should get in the car, that he needed to speak to their mother for a moment. Kat was stuck, then. Beholden to stand there by her car door as Ivan ran a hand over his beard and looked her up and down like some kind of predator. She nervously glanced into the car to see if the boys were watching but they were already attending to what music they’d listen to on the way home.

“Ivan—” she began, shakily. He was looking at her so intensely that she felt like he was able to see through her clothing. She didn’t dare look down to see if he could see her nipples poking out against the front of her dress. 

“Kat, listen,” Ivan interrupted, before she could lamely thank him for dinner again. He took a small step toward her but she folded her arms across her chest defensively and he stopped. “I miss you more than I can bear. I need you to …” His words left him, and she watched with half horror and half satisfaction as he pressed his full lips together. He was trying not to cry.

“What. What do you need me to do, Ivan.” Oh, her sister would be proud of her for that!

Ivan leaned against the side of her car and looked at her mournfully. He shrugged, then, and looked up at the red neon BBQ sign. He didn’t have a speech planned? How unlike him. She was expecting a lecture but all she got was him gawking at her like a lovesick boy.

“I need you to give me a _chance_ ,” Ivan grunted, gathering some resolve. He looked back at her, his eyes earnest and focused. “I love _you_ , Katrina. I think about you … constantly. Please give me a chance. Let me come home to you.”

“Absolutely not, Ivan!” she barked, laughing nervously out of surprise. “You live in London now.”

Ivan looked like he was about to fall to his knees and worship at her feet. Katrina had to admit that it felt good to have a little power back. She couldn’t control what had happened, but she could control this. 

“Please, Kat,” he continued. “Please just say we can talk. I know I don’t deserve your time but I love you and I’m asking you if you could just … if we could just talk. Let me take you for a drink tonight. I just need to be with you again. Just for an hour. Anything.”

Kat considered it, briefly. He was her first love, her partner, her husband. Surely an hour wouldn’t hurt. But then again, a lot of damage could be done in an hour. And four months of hard-won recovery would be undone. She shook her head and carefully said, “No. I have to go, now, anyway. Thank you again for dinner and for coming up. The boys—it meant a lot to them.”

Ivan groaned plaintively, moving closer to her. He reached out to take her elbow in one hand and pulled her toward him. Her instincts should have told her to recoil from him, but they were misfiring. They were telling her to throw her arms around him and make out with him on the bonnet of the Corsa—with boys in the car and all. Not helpful!

“Ivan,” Kat whimpered, “please don’t. I can’t—”

“It’s only a hug,” he murmured, tugging gently at her arm so it came free of her chest. “Please just let me.”

She relented. For all her strong words and bitch-faced posturing, Kat was undone in a moment by the close smell of Ivan, the feel of his touch against her bare skin, the solidness of him, and the soft sound of his voice urging her to surrender to an embrace. So, she surrendered, just for a moment: She wrapped her arms around his waist and closed her eyes as her cheek came to rest against his shoulder. 

“You’re killing me, Katrina,” Ivan whispered, squeezing her closer to him and swiveling his hips just enough into her that she could confirm it when he added, “I want to be back in our bed with you. Tonight. Please. I need you.”

Kat sighed, frustrated, pulling away from his body slightly. “Ivan … jesus. The boys.”

“They can’t see.”

She shot a surreptitious look toward the interior of the car and could see he was right. With an exasperated moan, she trembled a bit in his arms.

“Let me back in,” he urged, pulling away from their embrace enough that he could look down at her mouth. “Please.”

Kat withdrew completely from their hug and gathered her composure enough to say, sharply, “No.” Ivan’s face fell and the look he gave her pushed several of her buttons at once. Before she could think better of it, she added a quick amendment onto her refusal. “But, you can call me from the road, OK? We can talk then—when you’re out of Birmingham. In an hour or so, all right?”

Ivan looked relieved. He smiled as if she’d just made his night. “Yes. In an hour. Thank you, Kat.”

“God _damn_ it, Ivan,” Kat snarled before opening up her car door clumsily. Changing her tone entirely, she turned away from him and chirped at their sons, “Say good night to your father, boys!”

When she looked in the rearview mirror, Ivan was still standing in the space her car had left, watching them go. 

 

An hour later—probably an hour on the dot, that overly literal arse—her mobile rang quietly on her bedside table. Before answering it, she tiptoed over to shut the bedroom door against the sound of the boys watching something on the downstairs TV. Then, she sat on the side of the bed, watching the screen light up with Ivan’s number on it. _Oh, sod it_ , she thought, and picked up. It was just a phone call.

“Hi, Ivan,” she said into the phone. In the hour that had passed since she’d seen him, she’d changed out of her dress and those uncomfortable but killer heels, washed her face clean of makeup, and changed into an old, grubby t-shirt (of Ivan’s) atop a fresh, dry pair of cotton knickers. 

“When did you get those shoes?” Ivan asked urgently. He was serious. He’d been thinking about them.

Kat laughed, “Where are you, right now? If you say you’re still in Birmingham, I’m hanging up.”

Ivan groaned and she could tell he was checking with his nav screen. “Somewhere outside Northampton,” he offered gruffly. He pressed on about the shoes: “When did you get them? Did you get them recently?”

Katrina sighed and got into bed, feeling more comfortable talking to Ivan with some distance between them. “Yes, last week.”

She could hear Ivan exhale, as if he’d been holding his breath for some time. Smugly, he concluded, “So, for me. You got them because you knew you’d be seeing me.”

“I did not!” Kat lied, laughing a little. A second glass of wine when she’d arrived home had somewhat loosened the tension inside of her. “Don’t flatter yourself. I deserve to have nice things.”

“You do,” Ivan agreed. His embellished accent barely even bothered her as he tacked on a quick rush of confessions: “And those were very nice shoes, indeed. I could barely take my eyes off you in those shoes. And that dress. Kat. You are bloody gorgeous. I’ve miss you so much.”

His words turned her center into molten butter and she momentarily allowed herself to stop being angry at him. He was never one to flatter her, or anyone, and to hear him so moved just by how she’d looked was beyond gratifying. He never said flowery shite like this. _Stuff that up your arses, young bar trash_. She was still Ivan’s wife and knew what he wanted and how he wanted it. No one could do it like she could, she was sure of that.

“Are you hard right now?” Katrina, emboldened by the compliments and her newfound power, dared him. He sounded so tortured already, and the compunction to add to his distress was irresistible. He groaned on the other end of the line and she knew she’d called him out. “I felt it against me when we said goodbye at the car.”

“Kat, I’ve been several degrees of hard since I set eyes on you at Eddie’s school. I could barely control myself,” he admitted tensely. “I can hardly think right now. I want you so fucking badly.”

“Mmm,” Katrina murmured into the mobile. She let her own hand dip below the covers, slightly under the lacy trim on her knickers. Cruelly, she added, “But I thought you wanted to talk? What happened to that?”

Ivan hastily responded, “I do! I do want to talk. Love, whatever you want. We can talk.”

She paused, running her nail across the lowest bits of her abdomen, just where her hair started to thicken above her sex. When she dipped her first finger into herself, she was not surprised to find that she was soaking wet.

“I don’t want to talk,” she said breathily into the phone. “Ivan, get off the road, please.”

“What? Should I turn around?” Ivan replied, too quick to assume.

“No, just find somewhere private.”

Five arduous minutes later, with Ivan safely tucked into a dark car park outside a warehouse on a frontage road, he asked her if she was still wearing the bloody shoes. His breathing had thickened a bit and Kat knew he had the front of his dress trousers undone and his cock out.

Of course she wasn’t wearing the shoes, but she rolled her eyes a bit and teased him by saying, “Yes, just the shoes. Nothing else.” No need for him to know about the real state of things: hair up in a knot, his shabby old T-shirt pushed up over her tits and her cotton pants wrapped around one ankle. 

“Ah fuck,” he moaned. “I want to see that. Are you touching yourself, then? Kat, my god, I’m so bloody hard for you.”

Kat mumbled her assent and closed her eyes, imagining him as she’d seen him a hundred times when they were naked together: his beautiful mouth open slightly, eyes tightly closed with his ginger and blond-tipped eyelashes resting against his cheek, both hands at his groin, his arms framing his chest and tightened abs, one hand wrapped around his thick penis and the other pulling at his balls.

“Talk me off, Ivan,” she whispered into the mouthpiece as she cradled it against the pillow. Her hand free, she reached over into her bedside table drawer and pulled out her vibrator. 

Ivan clearly liked that request, and he groaned in appreciation, “Fuck me, yes, Kat. I would love to do that. And more. Anything. Can’t stop thinking about being between your legs, with my tongue—” He paused for a second, listening. “What’s that sound?”

It was a quiet one, her vibrator. She’d read the reviews and everyone said that this one was 75% quieter than the Hitachi Magic Wand that she’d been ignoring for several years as it sat idly under their bed. When the Hitachi was going, it sounded like someone was operating a backhoe. Couldn’t use that with the boys in the house. The new one was no louder than an electric toothbrush, but still loud enough that Ivan could hear it. Apparently.

Kat groaned as she held it against herself. “What do you think it is? It’s a … toy?” she replied, slightly annoyed. “So what? Keep talking.”

He obeyed and quickly launched into a rather brutish description of how from the moment he’d seen her, all he’d wanted to do was throw her over his shoulder like a caveman, take her out to the car and rip off their clothes, bite off her shoes, spread her legs open so he could put himself inside of her and stay there forever. 

Just like the time in Cardiff. They’d had a huge row their first day to themselves and ended up fucking each other senseless by way of making up. They were hardly able to dress, much less leave the holiday rental, even knowing that the boys were probably being bored to death by his mum back at her subsidized flat in Merthyr Tydfil. They boys were disappointed that they hadn’t gone to the waterfront.

His breathing became more labored on the other end of the line and in her mind’s eye, Kat could see him, probably absolutely flogging it, seat slid back and knees banged up against the steering wheel. His descriptions of what he’d do, if he were with her, grew more graphic and less eloquent as they went at themselves. He grunted out a fantasy, bookended on either side by the sound of him spitting into his hand. “Oh, Kat, my mouth on your cunt, sucking at your clit how you like, with my fingers inside you, and you digging those heels into my back so hard they draw blood.”

“Oh, god, Ivan,” she swooned, rolling the head of her toy across the apex of her pussy. “Don’t stop. Keep going.”

He obliged her without pause, “And then, after you come, I won’t stop. I’ll pick you up and turn you upside down until you are doing that handstand you’ve promised me. I’ll eat you like that, too. Holding you up by your legs. Front to back, I’ll devour you until you’re spent and my face is dripping with you.”

Although it sounded exhausting, that pose, she did like the geometry of it. She imagined herself straining to reach his cock with her mouth so she could return the sensation of being devoured. Pilates didn’t prepare her for everything, but she thought she could manage that.

“I’m close, Kat,” he warned. “I can’t …”

“It’s okay. I am too,” she whispered, also breathing hard. 

With an experienced shift in position, she moved the pressure of the vibrator against her clit, harder now, pressing against it with slightly raised hips. Fucking hell, she wanted him inside of her, too. If he wasn’t such a bloody idiot! So fucking reckless! Wanking himself off in his estate car rather than happily pounding away at her cunt in their nice bed is what he deserved. She deserved more than being talked off by her stupid ex while she fucked a vibrating silicone dick. Right after this orgasm, she’d demand better, from him, from herself. But first, she had to clear herself of the tension that had been building in her all night. After that, she could think more rationally.

Ivan made a strangled noise that was somehow a mix of a grunt and a shout as he came. Kat recognized the sound, familiar with it after years of sharing space with Ivan’s body. He was probably still coming—where would it go? over those navy trousers? across the steering wheel? on those leather seats? he’d lose it!—as he confessed his love for her: “Unf. Oh fuck, Kat … it’s gone everywhere. I love you. I love you so much, baby. Come for me, too, please? Let me hear it.”

Kat held her breath and concentrated on the sound of his voice, squeezing her eyes tightly shut while she imagined him shuddering with his release, as he always did. He turned into such a loving pile of vulnerable mush once he’d come. She loved that about their lovemaking, because that’s what it felt like: love. Right up until the end.

She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a noisy, demonstrative orgasm. He didn’t deserve that validation. When she came, the only sound she emitted was a hitched whimper and a large sigh. She twitched and spasmed a few more times as the orgasm passed through her, and then held down the button that would turn the vibrator off.

Ivan was quiet on the other end of the phone. He was listening. She could hear his breath, still ragged, but calming down. In a voice hardly above a mumble, he asked, “Kat? Please let me come home? I’m not far. Just an hour away—it’s nothing. Please.”

Kat let go of her vibrator and took ahold of the phone again. With her free hand, she rubbed her face. He sounded so sad. It would be so easy to just have him turn around. She could wake up with him next to her and pretend nothing had ever happened. They could see a therapist, maybe. Janet could recommend someone. Even her sisters would understand, eventually. Wouldn’t they?

“Are you there, Kat?”

“I’m here,” she whispered in reply. The room sounded so quiet without the sound of the vibrator. She took a deep breath and let it out as she considered his offer. She couldn’t allow it. Yet, something had shifted in her, now. She was able to softly refuse him, saying, “No. Not tonight, Ivan.”

Ivan was silent. She knew he was disappointed. All that soft, loving mushiness of him in his sensitive state was being rejected, and for the first time, she felt like she was being too mean. She’d loved him for all of her adult life. Everything she loved best about her life was intertwined with him, in one way or another. She found it almost impossible to deny him.

“Maybe some other night. But not tonight,” she murmured sleepily. “I’m tired, love. Drive safe—”

“Kat,” Ivan interrupted. His voice choked a little as he added an urgent, “Katrina, PLEASE.”

“Drive safely,” she repeated, speaking over him. He grumbled at her wordlessly, sounding exhausted and frustrated.

“Good night, Ivan.”

Before she ended the call, she heard his soft reply: “Good night, Kat. I love you.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katrina and Ivan have a reckoning, of sorts.
> 
> Ivan Locke played by Tom Hardy  
> Katrina Locke played by Ruth Wilson  
> Donal played by Andrew Scott

KATRINA

 

The phone shenanigans with Ivan were a mistake. Katrina knew it when she woke up to a text from him asking if he could ring her again that afternoon so they could make plans. She didn’t respond. Instead, she guiltily texted her sister Meghan and confessed her sins. Even Meg’s reaction (of coming around to the house so she could berate her in person) was better than keeping her own counsel, which would have resulted in another round with her vibrator and likely telling Ivan that it was fine to call whenever he wanted her.

Meghan, bless her, ripped her sister to utter shreds, instructing Katrina to wait a day or two before replying to that piece of shit Ivan to say that seeing him had been a mistake in the first place, and that she needed space.

“Why has he come back? Did he finally find out that he couldn’t fuck one of his buildings?” Meghan asked, pawing through Kat’s wardrobe as if Ivan might be hiding there.

Katrina considered the question. She felt that Ivan was, like most men, forever chasing after a conquest. Not necessarily sexual conquest, either, although certainly that. When they’d met, Kat was his obsession and he’d focused all of that delicious intensity on her. She ran, he chased. Then, he had her—tick mark—so he moved onto professional conquests. Buildings were perfect for him; a challenge, albeit passive and mathematical. Starting with small jobs, he’d labor, achieve, move on. Move on to a larger build. Labor again. Achieve again. Move on. And then larger, and then larger again. Buildings entertained him for fifteen years, give or take. As far as she knew, anyway. Always a new, bigger and better project. He wasn’t even their architect—he was just a builder of foundations—but you’d never know it.

Which left Kat … where? Mostly playing second fiddle to Ivan’s beautiful buildings. His real pride was found in those towering monoliths grounded by his concrete. Not his sons, not his family, not his spouse that he’d chased so. Buildings. Cold buildings. 

But it was good enough, in the day to day. They were caring partners, good parents, and they made love often enough. Ivan provided for her and the children quite well. And, anyway, what kind of arsehole is jealous of her husband’s constructions?

 

Back on the wagon, then. Pilates, daily. Back to using faithful, even-tempered, and professional Janet, the family mediator, to coordinate visitation. It probably drove Ivan mad but it was how it had to be. Her sister Meghan was at the ready to smash her mobile with a hammer if Kat so much as replied to Ivan’s daily texts with a heart emoji. 

Katrina took her time and sat with the pain because she had to. The first two weeks were the hardest. Kat could still feel Ivan’s hand on the small of her back at the restaurant. Still hear him declaring his devotion over the phone. Still see his eyes boring into her at the school. So, she committed to two weeks of strict discipline and diversionary tactics. After a fortnight, it got easier, and eventually, she was able to successfully pretend that she hadn’t entertained the possibility of letting Ivan back into her life. 

She buried herself in her life: two months of mindful meditation; Netflix nights with Sean and Eddie; private counseling; drinks with the girls; a quick weekend trip with her half-sister, Carly, to Spain; and several new wardrobe refreshes. After all that, after two months of dedicating herself to getting Ivan all the way out of her system, Kat was ready to come out from her hole in the ground. 

Katrina slept with Donal soon after her reemergence. Broke the sadness seal, just to see what it felt like to be free of Ivan. Plus, she was absolutely gagging to go to bed with someone—anyone, really. She couldn’t very well live the rest of her life having only fucked the father of her children, especially as it was clear that Ivan had no intention of going the rest of his life sleeping only with the mother of his children. And Donal was … well, he was available. He wasn’t an unknown quantity on a dating site or a man at the bar. He was willing and mostly able. It wasn’t a spectacular move by any means, no, going there with Ivan’s mate, but Katrina was angry. She’d been lonely for touch, and there Donal was: convenient and simple. 

Good old “friend of the fam” Donal: giving her the eye, trying to be clever with his flirtation, and complimenting her on how she looked in her new sundress. When Kat finally returned one of the lazy passes he threw at her, Donal looked as though he’d won the bloody lottery.

She wished she could say sex with Donal was better than it was with Ivan, but it was shit. He suffered from whiskey dick more often than not. At first, she thought perhaps he was shy. Like Ivan, at first. Nervous, and on his best behavior when her knickers dropped. 

Then she thought that maybe Donal was feeling guilty for sleeping with his friend’s wife. He still went for it, though, didn’t he? 

Whatever it was, Donal took ages to get an erection, could barely keep it, and subsequently came with a weak mewling cry before she could get there herself. Eventually, Kat discovered that if she rode him backwards, mounting him while facing away, she had a 50/50 chance of coming before he did. So, at least half the time, she was satisfied. The other half of the time, Kat did all the work herself while Donal contributed little more than asking her if she “liked that.” 

Her fantasies were wild—revenge, a lot of the time, always in which Ivan suffered greatly. In her mind, Kat had vicious, animalistic, loveless sex with strangers she’d see on the street, old crushes, even celebrities. In the fantasies, she made Ivan watch other men enjoy her body. She imagined herself dressing up in her new clothes, with her newly rediscovered fitness, and finding Ivan in Islington (in her fantasies, she knew exactly where that woman lived), just to torture him by ignoring him in person. She’d wear the highest and sexiest heels in the world to the pub he liked, the Squalor Victoria. That would get his attention. She’d have him slavering after her, begging her for just a word, and she’d laugh and then leave with whomever she pleased. 

Kat swore to her sisters and friends that she would reduce Ivan to ash if he so much as set foot back in Birmingham for good again. This was her town. He could have London, and even Wales, if that’s what he wished, but he couldn’t have Birmingham ever again.

_Please_ , Ivan’s texts said, two months after they’d had dinner and a chat following Eddie’s school event. Six months into their split, he was still pleading, and Katrina was still ignoring. 

_Please, Kat. You’re killing me._

_Let me come home to you._

_Please. I love you._

But then, one Saturday night, on an evening where Ivan was slotted to take the boys from their football matches to dinner, and then on to their respective friends’ houses before fucking right back off to London, Kat awoke with a start to the sound of Bruno barking at what sounded like someone beating down the front door of the house.

Her phone reported it was 11:15 p.m., so Katrina’s first instinct was that one of the boys was in trouble. Her next was to call the police. But then she heard a man speaking into the house interior, through the front window, and the dog’s barking turned into an excited whine. Bruno knew Ivan’s voice, if not the sound of his fists hitting the doorframe. The neighbors were going to go insane about the noise, Kat realized with embarrassment. How would she explain it to Mrs. Kent?

“Ivan!” Kat whispered loudly, racing up to the window near the door while closing her thin kimono over her camisole and knickers. She’d been dead asleep and dreaming about swimming, before this unpleasantry, and the annoyance was reflected in her voice. “STOP. What are you doing? Have you gone mad? Are you _drunk_?”

Ivan shook his head on the other side of the window, gazing in at her but staying quiet. He looked a mess. Kat didn’t move to unlock the door but she quickly gave him a once-over: He’d been in an accident. Or a fight? He had a scuff on his cheek and a spot of blood on his jacket, and he was rubbing his knuckles. 

_“Did you let Donal fuck you, Kat?”_ Ivan’s voice came out as a sputtering, choked rasp. He must have screamed and hollered the whole drive to her house.

A fight, then. He’d been in a fight with Donal.

Kat was unlocking the bolt and opening the door to Ivan before she knew it, absolutely horrified by the airing of her personal business within a close community. She hissed, “What are you DOING here? What have you done?”

“What have _I_ done?” Ivan replied indignantly, shambling into the house after her. He was shaking, he was so upset. “I’ve just come from seeing Donal at the pub and he told me that you weren’t returning my calls because you and he were ‘seeing each other.’ You? And Donal? Is it true?”

She closed the door tightly behind Ivan, switching off the light in the porch. It was too bright. She felt as though she was being interrogated. With her back leaning against the door, Kat shrugged her shoulders lightly.

“We’re not dating, if that’s what you mean, Ivan,” she admitted tersely. Then, she tacked on the obvious: “Not that it’s your business what I do.” 

She looked Ivan over in the dim light of the entryway. His jumper was present, as always, but stretched out as if someone had grabbed it. His shirt-tails were showing, atop his grubby old jeans and flashy, new green trainers. Kat almost laughed: The trainers, along with his freshly trimmed hair and beard, were nothing if not shades of his own father, when he came home to Ivan’s mum, begging for another chance. 

Except this Locke had bloody knuckles. Even the dog had noticed and was sniffing the blood. Ivan was staring at her, holding his hands to his sides, looking for all the world like a little boy who’d been told he was caught misbehaving. When he found his voice, it cracked as he repeated himself: “ _You’ve let Donal fuck you._ Kat. Please tell me this is a bloody joke. I don’t know if I can handle it being true.”

“You should leave,” Kat said firmly, folding her arms across her chest. “I don’t know what you’ve done to him but if you’ve come over here to brag that you’ve beaten a man for something that is none of your concern …”

Ivan stumbled back into the living room until his heels hit the base of the stairs. Losing his balance, he sat down shakily on the step and buried his face in his hands with a silent heave of his shoulders. Katrina, exasperated, excused herself to shut the dog into the mud room.

“For god’s sake, Ivan, you’re bleeding all over everything,” Katrina said, when she came back, looking at his scuffed knuckles. She instinctively moved toward him, remembering all the times she’d cleaned him up when they first got together. Ivan often surfaced at her door with battered hands after some stupid altercation. It was how he let off steam before he found ways to contain that rage. But an actual fight hadn’t happened in years. And definitely not a fight with a mate.

Kat asked, just out of curiosity, “Is Donal … all right? Your hands are not looking so good, Ivan.” 

“I don’t know. Yes. He’s fine,” Ivan mumbled, face still hidden behind his hands. “Just … caught the skin on his teeth. Might have knocked a couple of them out. I couldn’t believe it. Kat. He said—”

Kat rolled her eyes. Donal missing teeth, even. Bloody _children_. “He’s an idiot, Ivan. I don’t know what he told you but we’re not in any kind of a relationship. Not that it’s your business.”

“But you’ve gone to bed with him,” Ivan said pointedly, dropping his hands to his knees as Kat squatted before him to get a closer look at his bleeding fingers. He looked at her, deeply terrified.

She squeezed his index finger, which looked like it was swelling a bit, and he let her do so without hesitation. Didn’t seem broken. She kept her hand on his hand, still atop his knee, to calm him as she matter-of-factly replied, “Yes, Ivan. We fucked. More than once.” 

Ivan’s eyes reflected just enough of the streetlights from outside that Kat could see they were shining wet, filled with tears. He sniffed, wiping his cuff across the bridge of his nose. 

“Oh fuck. Oh god,” he moaned, with a deep sorrow, as though his heart was being torn out through his chest. Big strong Ivan Locke—king of the builders, concrete genius and man’s man—taken down by the thought of some useless Irish bloke putting his willy in her. Kat almost felt a little pity for Ivan before remembering the dagger in her heart that _he’d put there himself_ , half a year ago, when he abandoned her to start a new family. He was no cuckold. _She_ was the cuckold. Or whatever a lady cuckold was called.

A swell of anger welled up in Kat and she stood up abruptly. _Why does Ivan get to blubber away on the stairs? Why do I have to comfort him, dry his tears? He was the fuck-up. He was the ruiner._

She was about to open her mouth to tell him just to wash his hands up and get back on the road to London when he reached out and wrapped his arms around her legs to draw her close, burying his face into the fabric of her dressing gown at the hip as he sobbed against her.

Well, Christ. That was unfair! Ivan rarely cried, especially in front of her. It made her want to start crying, too. He rarely displayed any emotions, really, other than irritation, mild amusement, intermittent horniness, or quick anger. He cried when he’d been reprimanded at work, but not when his father passed. He wept when Kat miscarried, but not when either of the boys were born. To see him come unraveled was unsettling, to say the least. He was the one made of concrete. He was the one who was supposed to be unshakable. She suddenly didn’t know what to do with her hands. With trepidation, she placed them gently on Ivan’s head, cradling it and rubbing her thumbs through his short hair.

“Please forgive me, Kat,” he sobbed, his low voice a deep distant rumble against her pelvis. This unexpected contact was intimate and so verboten that Kat was experiencing a mild sort of vertigo. She felt weak. Ivan too. He choked the words into her hip: “I’m so sorry. Just so, so sorry. I’ve wanted to tell you but you wouldn’t hear me … and then when I had the chance, I made a fool of myself.”

Kat listened, acting more passive than she felt. But that statement confused her, “What do you mean? You mean that night? On the phone?”

Ivan nodded briefly, gripping her more tightly as he sniffled into the silky fabric. “Yes, I’m sorry for that, too. I thought it meant we’d … I didn’t understand why you wouldn’t respond. I understand now.”

Kat whispered, rubbing her thumb across the narrow downy ridge at the top of Ivan’s ear, “I’d made a mistake.”

Her admission set off a moan in him and he shook his head, childishly. “It wasn’t. You did nothing wrong. Everything I’ve done … Kat. Please. I’m sorry.”

Kat’s breath hitched in her chest as she nodded, beginning to cry along with Ivan. Softly, she agreed with him. “I know you are, love. I know you’re sorry.”

But it didn’t matter, did it? Sorry, sorry, sorry. Everyone’s so sorry, right down to Donal and a little baby girl in London.

Katrina steeled herself a bit and patted Ivan on the back, resolving not to wallow along with him. With a sigh, she told him, “Come on, then. Go sit on the sofa. I’ll get you cleaned up and pour us a drink.” 

Ivan looked up at her as she pulled against his embrace, his face a mix of hopeful and confused. She wiped her eyes with one hand and used the other to smooth a tear across Ivan’s cheek. Maybe she was just being a fool for him, once again, but she still thought he was objectively the most gorgeous man in England. He didn’t know how beautiful he was back when they’d met, nor when they lived together. She wondered if he knew now.

“You wanted to talk, Ivan,” she said, shrugging lightly as she moved away from him. She saw he was kicking his shoes off, almost out of habit. But it hadn’t been a habit, had it? He’d tracked concrete all over her house for fifteen years, claiming he’d forgotten to remove his work boots. But now? Now, he remembered? “So, talk.”

 

Ivan started with why it happened in the first place. It was nothing Kat had done, he assured her—it was more something he was, something he wasn’t. He described what he remembered of being in Croydon: happy with the job, a little high on himself for how easy it had all gone. He felt he was out of place around the crew, most of whom were unknown to him. They were good blokes, but he was an imposter among them and was sure they knew it. If any of them knew how much more he was earning than they were, how he had lucked his way into upper management, really—they’d hate him. They’d have had him drawn and quartered for being a fraud. But not Bethan. Bethan respected him. She was quiet and sullen and studied his every move. Not an ounce of flirtation between them, really. She just wanted to learn how to be a construction manager—that was it. She was supposed to be his assistant but acted almost as an apprentice. It felt good, he said. Like he wasn’t an imposter, after all, but a professional who’d earned his stripes.

He carried that feeling into the evening on the last night of the pour, and then there was wine. He was having such a nice time that he didn’t want it to end, and before he knew it, they were fooling around. He was the one who took it too far. Bethan just took what he offered.

“I wasn’t attracted to her, Kat—nothing like that. She was just … there when I was feeling happy, and I didn’t want it to stop,” he said, swirling a dwindling cube of ice within his tumbler. “It was a mistake, that was all. I was sorry. Right away, I was sorry.”

Kat grimaced. “If you were actually sorry, Ivan, you would have told me,” she corrected him, looking away from him to stare down into her own glass of whiskey. “You—you could have told me that you made a bad mistake, and you were sorry for it. We might have made it through, if you’d told me. But you didn’t. You came home and made love to me. You didn’t tell me a bloody thing.”

Ivan nodded guiltily, looking away. He stayed silent.

Before she could stop herself, Kat heard her own voice, asking, “Do you love her? Bethan. Do you—ugh—do you sleep together?”

Ivan’s eyes, still shining, rolled up to the ceiling as he blinked himself out of weeping. “Kat,” he sighed, sounding resigned. He took a long time before he responded. “No. I don’t. Love Bethan, I mean. She’s … very kind to me and she’s devoted to the baby. But I don’t love her, no. I love you. Only you.”

It made her feel strange to hear that. She wasn’t sure how she felt. He’d left her and the boys and his life for someone he didn’t even love? Was Bethan aware of that? 

“So, you don’t share a bed with her?” Kat pressed. Ivan’s ears immediately turned beetroot red. There was her answer. What a chickenshit. Couldn’t even own up to shagging the woman he’d left her for. Kat drank the rest of her whiskey down in one gulp. “I want to punch you in the face, Ivan. I swear. I could do it. I’d like to lay you out flat.”

“Please, be my guest,” he mumbled, sounding miserable. “Have at it, Kat. I mean it.”

“You—” Kat sat up straighter on the couch, ready to deny that she’d do such a thing.

“She doesn’t want me, either, OK? Bethan doesn’t,” Ivan interrupted. Katrina stopped short, confused. “We share a bed sometimes but we aren’t … we don’t. It’s all just for the baby. My shit job, being in London, moving into Bethan’s flat—it’s all just so Rosie doesn’t come up without a father, like I did. Bethan and I aren’t _in love_.”

“Does she know that?” she asked pointedly. And then, trying to keep the sarcasm out of her voice, but failing, she added, “Or has she accepted that you only love your job?” 

Ivan frowned and shook his head, touching his glass to the scrape on his cheek. “It’s not like that anymore, Kat,” he said, sounding so tired. “I don’t know what she thinks. She’s at a loss as for what to do with me, I imagine.”

“Hmmph, we should form a bloody club,” Kat snapped. She poured more whiskey into her glass and offered the bottle to Ivan, who took it from her to pour himself a modest amount as well. She was momentarily surprised he accepted it—whiskey was not on his list of acceptable beverages, normally—but then she remembered: _Oh, yes, Ivan’s a drinker again_. She thought of something else. Something Donal had told her. “So, if you and Bethan aren’t … are you dating someone?”

Ivan looked hunted. Persecuted. Of course he’d know it was Donal that told her, but Kat didn’t really care. “I’m not—no. I’m not _dating_ ,” he said, tersely, and a muscle in his neck under his ear visibly twitched.

“Who have you been with, Ivan?” she insisted, feeling quite masochistic. “Tell me.” 

“It’s all been mistakes, Kat. Over a year of mistake after mistake.” He looked pleadingly at her. “Please,” he urged. He was visibly uncomfortable, and not even the whiskey could help that. “Stop torturing me. Please.”

Kat wasn’t done. Emboldened by the liquor, she taunted, “Oh? I heard something about a teenager. Was she one of your many mistakes?”

Ivan’s face darkened and he looked at his watch like he might have an appointment. “I’m going to _fucking_ _bury Donal_ ,” he growled and actually shifted, as if he was going to get up and murder the man. 

She reached out and gently put her hand on Ivan’s shoulder, urging him back down to the couch. When he was fully seated again, Kat shrugged. She felt the need to discharge his anger, since she felt responsible for it. “Stop it already—I don’t care. It’s your life, Ivan. You should do what you want.” _You will anyway._

She pulled her hand away but Ivan followed it with his own, capturing her fingers in his. She looked at their hands, twisted together. Why hadn’t he taken off his wedding ring? With a mix of bitterness and sadness, she added, “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Someone new? Someone to start over with?” 

Someone who didn’t know where he came from, Kat thought. Someone _not her._

He didn’t deny it but he didn’t confirm it either. She knew it was true, so it didn’t matter either way. Kat’s ringless fingers fidgeted in Ivan’s hand and she began to pull away, but Ivan’s grip tightened slightly, drawing her hand closer to him on the cushion. She didn’t fight it. Instead, she drank the rest of her whiskey from the glass held in her slightly trembling hand in one swallow.

“Katrina,” Ivan said softly, “I don’t want that.” 

Kat started to shake her head in disbelief. Mostly at herself. _What was she doing!?_

“I don’t know who or what to be angry with, here,” she stammered. “You? The woman who you put a baby in? The baby? Some girl you see at the bar? The fact that you’re even _back_ in bars, in the first place?” She trailed off as she looked at him, frustrated. “We worked so hard, Ivan …”

Ivan nodded and moved closer to Kat on the sofa cushion. He knew her, after all. He could see that she was relenting. One after the other, she felt her defenses failing. Her sister was going to kill her.

Katrina let her head fall to the couch back cushion and fought back tears. Quietly, she admitted, “You’ve successfully turned into someone else, I suppose, Ivan. And I don’t know you anymore. I don’t even know what you _want._ ”

His voice was low and dark, turning her into a puddle as always, when he told her, “All I want is you. All I’ve _wanted_ is you. I prioritized work over you and my children. That’s gone now. The work no longer matters to me like it did. That’s all changed.” He ducked his head to make eye contact with her. Setting down his glass and letting go of her hand, he finished, “I didn’t know how else to make it right, so I took a chance, and …” He opened his palms to her to reveal … nothing.

She could tell Ivan meant every word, because they sounded like they had been ripped physically from his spleen. She wasn’t sure he’d ever laid himself so bare.

When Kat raised her eyes to meet Ivan’s, she knew she wanted him to stay the night.

 

As much as Katrina had fantasized of humiliating Ivan—of torturing him with her high heels and deliberate exclusion and making him watch as another man worshipped her—what happened was, they fell easily into being together like they were still married and still in love.

It was easy to take him into their bedroom, to stand at the foot of their bed. It was easy to let him push her kimono off her shoulders and pull her singlet over her head. Ivan’s touch was soft and he was slightly trembling, as if he was struck shy by her, like he had been in the beginning. Kat reciprocated by taking off his layered shirts, dimly registering that he was leaner than he used to be. They stayed quiet, so quiet that Katrina was sure he could hear her heart beating under her breast.

The kissing was easy, too. Sweet and languid. The familiar tickle and scratch of Ivan’s beard, traveling down her throat and across her clavicle, made her breath hitch. She ran her hands down his arms, tracing the ropes of muscle under his tattoos. His stupid tattoos—once such a turn-on for her, imagining him as her very own bad boy to have and to hold, until death us do part, had become, in her mind, symbols of his deeply hidden selfishness, his immaturity. She loathed them now. But they weren’t her problem anymore. They were his literal crosses to bear. As were those necklaces, hung round his neck like protective amulets that didn’t bloody work.

Ivan’s hands tenderly worked their way from loosely gripping her waist to sliding across the bladed swells of her hipbones. He tucked his thumbs into the waistband of her knickers and started to pull them down. In turn, she moved her hands to his waist to undo his belt and unfasten the front of his jeans. The flat wall of his stomach muscles jumped as her knuckles grazed the skin there and she looked up at him. His eyes were fixed on her as if he was seeing her for the first time.

He’d want her mouth on him, she expected. Ivan loved getting head above all other sex acts—as Kat imagined most men did. Plus, that was their routine: first him, then her … then in and out, in and out, shudder, sigh, shower. But as Kat began to sink to the bed so she might drag his boxer briefs down to his sock-clad feet and become reacquainted with his cock, Ivan’s grip tightened on her hips.

“Uh-uh,” he grunted quietly. She felt his fingers dragging the soft, thin fabric of her panties over her bum and hips, and then her thighs. His whisper in the dim light of her reading lamp. “Lie down, Kat.”

Ivan knelt at the foot of the bed and hooked his arms under her thighs, kissing and licking a long line of wetness along her inner thighs. When his mouth reached her apex, it had grown hungrier for her. He teased his lips over her skin, every surface of her, tucking his tongue into every nook and cranny, broad licks across her sex. With his arms curling over her legs and his deft fingers, Ivan spread her apart and then deliberately isolated her clitoris. She was sure she was dripping. She could feel a small bit of wetness running between her arsecheeks, soaking into the quilt at the bottom of the bed. 

He held her there, open, scrutinizing her pussy and lightly blowing at the wet skin. It made her feel … powerful. In his grasp, and she felt powerful. Imagine. That same vagina that had accommodated him so many times, and birthed two humans—it belonged solely to her. She’d lend it as she saw fit, to whom she saw fit. Even Ivan, if she wanted. Just this last once.

“Ivan,” she offered, raking her fingers through his hair, trying to urge his mouth closer to her body. “I still have the Mirena in.”

“Mm?” He hummed the question. Had he forgotten so soon about the risk of pregnancy and the steps she took to prevent it?

“The …” Kat started, lifting her head to look down at him. He was still holding her open, still looking her over as if her pussy was a portal to another dimension. No real way to say it sexily, so just out with it, Kat. Ivan is literal, so _be literal._ “You don’t have to wear a condom, I mean.”

Ivan looked mortified for a second, as if it hadn’t even occurred to him to use one. Perhaps he was doing the maths, wondering if she’d said the same thing to Donal. Perhaps he was wondering if she was going to ask him if he’d been tested for STIs.

“I haven’t brought any,” he said, gruffly. Practical as he was, her statement was an intrusion, and he seemed vexed.

“So you know, I’ve used them with Donal—” she began to assure him, but hastily cut off her statement as Ivan let out an angry groan and clamped his thick lips over the entirety of her upper pussy, creating a vacuum seal before attacking her clit with a firm, aggressive tongue. Kat gasped and fell back on the bed, hooking her bent legs around Ivan’s shoulders.

He attended to her without touching himself, she noticed. That was not how this normally went. Instead, Ivan was ferocious with her, driven—firmly, greedily sucking at her until she felt her orgasm unfolding inside of her in an intricate, mysterious sequence. When Kat came, she reached between her legs to tug Ivan by the ears, holding him against her as she rubbed herself across his mouth and nose and thick facial hair. Ivan made a deep low growl in his throat as he took it, gamely relaxing in her grip.

“Do it again, Ivan,” Katrina panted, as she came to rest after riding out the deepest part of her pleasure. “With your fingers, this time.”

Might as well take advantage of his guilt, she thought. She deserved it. Plus, it was the last time.

Two hours later, Katrina was bordering on feeling entirely fucked out. She’d forgotten what it could be like when Ivan was truly present, truly devoted.

Ivan had denied himself orgasm multiple times: gently pushing away her hands when she reached for his cock as he licked and sucked his way up her body; pressing his thick hard length into her wetness, firmly but with a sublime tenderness and full eye contact; his mouth on hers, kissing in ways that she wasn’t sure they’d ever kissed; fucking her slowly and deeply, a torturous friction that he mediated with his hand between them, thumbing across her clit; and pulling out to recover his composure when he got too close. It was like he never wanted it to end, like his come would be the end of it, as usual. Which, Kat supposed, it would be. In the meantime, she reaped the benefits of Ivan’s attention to detail. She rode him, she used him, she exploited him. He seemed pleased with her greediness, happy to serve her.

When he did come, it was at her insistence. She was sore. She was tired. It all felt so good, soaking up all of his attention, but it couldn’t last forever. Ivan released himself inside of her held her to him so tightly that he was almost crushing her.

“I love you,” he whispered, over and over, his voice hitching on the last iteration. “I love you, Kat. I love you.”

She agreed with a slight nod of her head. She could tell that he loved her. She wasn’t sure what she felt. Sad, mostly?

Ivan stayed inside her, slowly softening, and before either of them knew it, they were both crying. Quietly and tenderly at first, but with increasing intensity, until they eventually were gripping each other tightly, holding on like they were overboard, clutching at each other to stay afloat, sobbing hard. Ivan’s muscular back heaved under her hands and he sputtered noisily into the hollow of her neck.

In her heart, Katrina felt something unravel and dissipate.

 _Goodbye, love_ , she thought, turning her head to kiss Ivan’s temple. _Goodbye._


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ivan Locke has his own reckoning.

“Well?” Bethan carefully asked Ivan over eggs and toast. She held Rosie with one arm and fed herself with the other. “Are you moving back to Birmingham?”

Her tone wasn’t like it had been, when she asked about Birmingham or Ivan’s family that he’d left behind. It was softer now. If she’d asked him that same question two weeks before, just after he’d seen Kat and the boys for dinner, and then enjoyed a salacious conversation with Katrina over the phone, Ivan might have had to confess that, yes, they were likely going to reconcile. That he hoped to move back to Birmingham as soon as he could. He’d already put considerable thought into how he’d orchestrate it, this time: everything above board, complete transparency; concrete plans to spend time with Rosie and provide support for Bethan. 

But that was a fortnight ago. There’d been no word from Katrina since then, so Ivan’s reply to Bethan was a simple shake of his head. His hopes had been dashed. Kat was off him again.

“Oh no, Ivan. What is it? I thought it went well?” Bethan asked, carefully wiping at Rosie’s fine hair. “You seemed so much happier after you saw them.”

Ivan nodded and kept his eyes on the baby. He and Bethan had become better friends over the months—partners, raising a baby. Friends, that was all. She didn’t seem to want more than that from him, at any rate. Bethan occasionally even gave off the sense that she’d like a little less of his early mornings and his grouchy skulking about. Something had shifted for her, too, after the night Ivan had accidentally stayed out. At Amber’s, that was. It had for him, at any rate, and Bethan must have noticed because she stopped asking him where he’d been. Ivan, for his part, stopped going to the Squalor Vic and had largely gone back to not drinking, so there wasn’t much to ask him about.

A routine was established: early mornings, his shitty work, a run with Rosie in the afternoon, tea, cleanup, unfunny comedy on the telly, Bethan to the daybed in Rosie’s room, Ivan to Bethan’s bed in her room. It was an odd arrangement, but it was working.

“It did,” Ivan told her. “I was.” He shrugged a shoulder and raised his eyebrows. How could he explain this kind of situations to the woman he’d had an affair with? It wasn’t possible. “But I’m not moving back to Birmingham."

Bethan left it at that, thankfully. She nipped at her toast and jostled Rosie on her hip, and the three of them ate the rest of their Sunday breakfast together in silence.

 

Not unlike his conversations with his father’s ghost, Ivan’s conversations with the baby were predictably one-sided. Rosie looked and listened, and Ivan kept up her side of their conversation. The one-sidedness didn’t keep him from narrating what he was doing whenever Rosie was in his care. He imagined that she would hear his voice—learn it, know it to be her father’s over time—and know she belonged, that she had a family. Wherever Ivan wound up, he’d be her father, and she’d know his voice.

Every day, there were new slight changes to observe about Rosie: her ability to grasp and reach, her horizons visibly broadening, her tiny expressions, the horrific mess she’d make in her nappies as Bethan tried to find a formula that agreed with her, the changing pitch of her voice as she began to experiment with making sounds.

One temperate evening, Rosie was merrily experimenting with babbling while Bethan and Ivan pushed her buggy—the non-jogger one—through the neighborhood. Bethan walked next to him, one hand possessively on the handlebar, as if he might lose control of the thing, pointing out the various plants she could identify on sight. Every ten paces or so, Bethan would coo back at Rosie encouragingly. 

Bethan had just turned their conversation to speculation on what Rosie’s first word might be—she rather hoped for “book,” while Ivan was absolutely sure it would be some variation of “mummy,” as it had been with both of his boys—when someone came around the corner and immediately stepped aside, off the curb, to allow the baby carriage to monopolize the pavement. With Bethan trailing behind him, single file out of courtesy, Ivan stopped short. Bethan bumped into his back with a surprised noise just as Ivan realized the person who’d moved out of their way was none other than Amber. The exact person he was hoping to avoid for the rest of his life. She was close enough that he might have accidentally rolled the buggy wheel over her foot, if she hadn’t skipped out of the way.

“Oh my god, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Amber hissed, her eyes darting from Ivan’s face to the baby, and then to Bethan, who had circled around to his side. Ivan immediately felt very exposed, like his multitudes of sins were visible stains on his skin. He glanced at Bethan quickly as she took in Amber. He started to push the buggy forward but Bethan held his arm, curious. Ivan stopped and clenched his teeth together so tightly they must have made a noise like grinding gravel.

“What? What is it?” Bethan asked Ivan, confused and slightly concerned. Glancing at Amber, she added kindly, “Everything all right?”

 “I don’t know—is everything all right with you?” Amber snapped. Bethan rightfully looked taken aback by Amber’s brusque reply. “You all right, Ivan?” Amber added contemptuously, her eyes narrowing. Ivan had an idea of what she must look like to Bethan: young, hip, confident. Everything Bethan wasn’t. Wearing heels, too-tight jeans and low-cut v-neck, it was clear that Amber was on her way out for the evening. Her attire made both Ivan and Bethan look like middle-aged schlubs.

 _Trivia night at the Vic_ , Ivan thought. That’s where she’s going. He knew that because he’d found her there before. At the memory, Ivan’s face flushed and he guiltily looked around at anything that was not flesh and bone.

The things he’d said to her, when he’d seen her last. Shameful. The things he’d done to her.

Amber tucked a strand of red hair behind her ear and asked, with hostility clouding her voice, “Aren’t you going to introduce me?” Before he could respond, she was sticking her hand out toward Bethan, her voice dripping with insincerity as she said, “I’m Amber. And you must be what? Ivan’s wife? Or are you his girlfriend?”

“Bethan—” Ivan started, cautiously moving away, hoping Bethan would join him in jogging on. He was interrupted by Bethan herself. She’d maneuvered herself between Amber and the buggy as they all paused on the sidewalk. Ivan felt a tender pang for Bethan just then, recognizing that she had instincts in her that she’d probably never imagined.

“What’s this, then?” Bethan snapped. She wasn’t an idiot, and she wasn’t blind. Her hackles were up for good reason.

Ivan would have liked to have been struck by a meteor, just then. He didn’t know what to say. Uncomfortably, he offered, “Amber, this is Bethan.”

“Yeah, hi, Bethan—and is this your baby, Ivan?” Amber brooded theatrically, peering into the buggy, where Rosie was fussing over her soother. “She’s so pretty."

Bethan evidently had had enough of whatever this was. She held her fingers splayed out to ward off any notion Amber might have of touching the baby. Bethan’s expression changed to hostile, as well. Grimly, Bethan asked, “What _is_ this? Who the bloody hell are you?”

“You should probably ask Ivan,” Amber glared at him. She was challenging him. Daring him to come apart. Antagonizing little bitch. This was foreplay for her and a disaster for Ivan.

Ivan sighed and rubbed his beard with the hand that was not white-knuckle gripping the handlebar of the baby buggy. This was likely his worst nightmare. The only way it could get worse would be if Kat was to toddle on by in her Corsa with the boys in tow.

“I, uh, know Amber from the pub around the corner,” he admitted tersely, ready to press on. But by Amber’s posture, she wasn’t about to let this go. And neither was Bethan. Her anger was palpable and Ivan felt it turn from Amber to him.

“Oh, really?” Bethan asked incredulously, looking at him like he was reheated shit. “Do you.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Amber snarked, unhelpfully. She was enjoying this. Ivan deserved her venom, truly, but knowing that didn’t make this airing of his private shame any less mortifying. Amber folded her arms across her breasts and continued, her words caustic: “From the pub. And his car. And a taxi. And my flat.”

“Amber, listen,” Ivan interjected quickly, eager to squash the topic. “I owe you an apology. Which I will give you, happily—but this is not the time nor the place.”

He glanced surreptitiously at Bethan, upon whom a clear understanding seemed to finally be dawning. 

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Bethan grumbled through gritted teeth. For all the ground they’d gained over weeks, months, of living comfortably together, Bethan’s eyes were now narrowed at him accusingly. “Ivan. Really!” 

Ivan was tempted to abandon ship and simply walk away, but he wouldn’t feel right leaving Rosie with two angry women. Ivan guiltily looked at Bethan and tried to urge her forward by putting his hand over hers on the handlebar. She pulled her hand away like his was on fire.

Amber swiftly moved in front of them, blocking them. Rapid fire, she spat out a stream of rage that had clearly been building for some time: “You can stuff your apology right up your arse, Ivan. What was it you said? Me and my blown-out cunt, trying too hard? How’s your _car_ , Ivan? I heard someone keyed it.”

Ivan groaned with the realization. Of course. Of course the scratch on his car wasn’t random.

“Oh fuck off,” Bethan snapped at Amber, finally fed up. Amber laughed dismissively, but didn’t budge, so Bethan wrenched the buggy handle out of Ivan’s hands in order to pull the whole rig backward, back in the direction from which they’d approached.

Ivan was stunned. Never in his life had something like this happened. He started after Bethan and the baby, feeling shaken and unsure in his steps, like he might trip over his own feet. She’d managed to turn the buggy around and was marching quickly away from where Ivan and Amber stood. He called after her: “Bethan, please wait.”

“You fix this before you come home,” she tossed over her shoulder, her face a mixture of rage and frustration. Her head was turned long enough for him to see that tears were already spilling over onto her cheeks

Amber got a good laugh at Bethan’s instructions.“Ooooooh, shit!” she crowed, tickled.

Ivan swung around to face Amber, shaking his head in utter disbelief. How the hell could he fix this? That ship had sailed and Ivan clearly wasn’t fucking on it. Ivan was in no condition to spend so much of his life apologizing for everything he’d ever done. Not after the letdown with Kat. But he did owe Amber an earnest attempt.

“Amber,” he began shakily, his heart pounding in his chest as he tried to maintain some control over himself. “I’m sorry—”

She raised her eyebrows and cut him off immediately: “No. You’re not fucking worth this, Ivan. The sex wasn’t _that_ good.”

Her words had conviction to them but right afterward, Amber looked unsure of herself. She was so young. When sober, Ivan could see Amber’s fiery bravado was just a front—a defense. He rubbed at his beard contemplatively and kept his eyes on her, staying quiet. A tiny montage—just flashes—played in Ivan’s head: her smooth, knockout body under him in the backseat; her manicured hand jammed down the front of his trousers in the taxi on the way to her house; a deep, violent kiss that left the taste of blood in his mouth; her bouncing on his cock in her bed.

Amber was right: The sex wasn’t worth this. He wasn’t worth it, either—at least, not to her.

Swallowing hard, Amber collected herself and finished with something she must’ve thought would really hurt him: “Go fuck yourself, okay, Ivan? And best not come back to the Vic, either. You’re not welcome there.”

Ivan chewed his bottom lip and nodded in agreement. Looking down at his feet, he struggled to find something to say that might make it better. Didn’t matter, though—just as he looked back up, Amber had turned back around and stalked off in the direction of Squalor Victoria.

 

Bethan’s hands were shaking but she wasn’t yelling. And her eyes were red but she wasn’t crying. Ivan with her stood in her garden, hands at his sides, quietly waiting for Bethan to rip him a new arsehole.

“I think it’s best if you look for your own flat, Ivan,” she said instead, her tone even.

“Bethan, I don’t know what to say,” Ivan said quickly. “That woman, Amber …”

Bethan shook her head as if it didn’t matter. “It’s not just her. I’ve been thinking about this for some time. I’m not accustomed to sharing space with someone.” Her head was lowered and she looked exhausted. Absolutely wrung out.

“And you’re chucking me out,” Ivan offered. The words were bitter in his mouth, but he was getting used to rejection.

Bethan sighed and looked up at him from her seat on the white cast-iron patio chair. “No, Ivan—I’m not ‘chucking you out.’” She kept her voice low, as if the baby might overhear. Softly, she added, “It’s been very helpful having you here but I think we both know it’s not going towork in the long term.”

Ivan felt slightly frantic for a moment and hurried to explain himself: “Bethan, I’ve—I’ve been drinking too much. It’s a bad habit, and I’ve been through it before. I should have known where that road leads me. But never with the baby—I haven’t. Just when I’m alone and … I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Bethan waved her hand dismissively, “I know you wouldn’t do anything to endanger the baby, Ivan. It’s not that. And it’s not my business what you do. We’re not … I’m not your wife. I’m not even your girlfriend. Your life is your own. Fully.” She reached out and took his dangling hand in hers and added, firmly but not without compassion. “I just—I don’t particularly want to live with you as you work your way through whatever it is you’re going through. It’s a lot, Ivan. I’m struggling to be a good mum to Rosie and I just don’t know if I have it in me to support you the way you need.”

 _That’s what I’m meant to say to her_ , Ivan thought dismally.

“No rush, though,” Bethan amended cheerfully—or, at least she aimed herself toward cheeriness. Ivan’s shame sank to new depths as he realized he’d been sacked all over again—and by Bethan, the kindest woman alive. She urged him, “You can take as long as you need to find somewhere. I hope you’ll look somewhere nearby, because I’d like it if you’d still be active with our daughter. I want you in our lives, Ivan. I do. Do you understand? Please tell me you understand.”

“I understand.” Ivan squeezed her hand amicably, trying to comfort her by saying he understood when he really didn’t. Fuckin’ banner day.

 

* * * 

Ivan had been quite a good boy for the two months after that excruciating mess with Amber and Bethan in Islington, so he allowed himself one or two small beers at dinner with Donal after he’d dropped the boys off at their respective friends’ houses. With Janet the mediator in play, it had been quite a while since he'd spoken with Donal on the phone or otherwise, but Ivan trusted that Donal would blab on about himself as usual, leaving no moment silent. Secretly, Ivan was also more than a little keen to find out if Donal had any clue as to why Katrina had completely ignored him after they’d had such a _moment_ over the phone on his way back to London.

They met at Donal’s favorite local, where he very showily offered to buy Ivan’s meal, since he’d just gotten that promotion and was making more money than he knew how to spend. Ivan declined, but he did permit Donal to buy him a lager.

The trouble with Donal, up in Birmingham, started when that Irish fuck pretended like he knew what he was talking about. It was after dinner and Ivan was on his second lager, Donal on his fourth, which was why he was about to order them two shots of Jaegermeister (“as a digestif!” Donal insisted when Ivan declined).

“So, did you see Katrina tonight, then?” Donal asked, almost too casually, taking both shots from the bartender and arranging them like sentinels on either side of his cider.

Ivan shook his head. “Not this time, no.” He sighed, settling back against his chair.

Donal nodded thoughtfully and took a slug from his pint. Ivan, fidgeting with his wedding ring, continued, “She only communicates through the mediator now, man. It’s odd. We had that nice dinner with the boys. We got on.” He was tempted to brag about how electric it was between them, after not seeing each other for so long, but decided against it. Too private.

Ivan did, however, add: “She even asked me to call her on my drive home. Just like old times.”

“But was it?” Donal quickly replied, shrugging as he turned his eyes back to the telly that was broadcasting a match. It wasn’t Birmingham, so neither of them paid it much attention.

Ivan felt slightly taken aback by something in Donal’s rhetorical, leading tone. That’s not the response he’d expected. He leaned forward a bit to read Donal’s expression. “What? Yeah, as I said, it was like old times. Me and Kat on the phone while I drive. Why, what do you mean?”

Donal glanced at Ivan quickly and shifted in his seat. “Nothing, man. Anyway … so then no word after that?”

“No. Nothing. Six weeks. And nothing,” he admitted. Ivan felt himself grow a little more tense. Donal wasn’t telling him something. He peered at him expectantly. “What?”

“Nothing, I said! Nothing. Just … you know.” He paused. “Maybe it’s not like old times for her.” Donal infuriatingly shrugged again.

Fucking hell _—what, mate?_ Ivan sharpened up considerably at his remark. Straightening in his seat, he waved a hand before Donal’s face, interrupting his line of sight to the television. He needed the man’s full attention. “What are you saying? Has she—Kat doesn’t talk to you about us, does she?”

That would blow his mind: Kat talking to bloody Donal about their marriage. A small knot of anger started forming in his gut. Ivan quickly took a drink of his lager in the hopes it might soothe his agitation.

Donal finally looked at him and shook his head. “‘Course not. She knows you and I hang out.”

Ivan wanted to relax. He was finding himself increasingly unable to, with the feeling of dread pressing down on him.

Donal tacked on, “Maybe she’s just been distracted. I don’t know.” His eyes went back to the television.

“‘Distracted’?” Ivan repeated.

“Yeah, you know …” Donal mused, “Like maybe she’s seeing someone.”

Ivan felt a bolt of anger run through him at the thought. Of course. That’s what was happening. Kat was … “seeing” someone. She’d moved on. In a flash, Ivan was so upset that he couldn’t even bring himself to repeat Donal’s words back to him for confirmation..

“She’s a beautiful woman, Ivan,” Donal murmured. “You know how it goes, man.”

Ivan could barely get his next words out. He growled, “Yeah, I fucking know she’s beautiful, Donal. What are you on about? I know how _what_ goes?”

Almost as if he was coming out of a daze, Donal’s posture changed as he registered the tone of Ivan’s voice. He shifted away from Ivan just slightly and frowned, holding his hands up. “Take it easy, Ivan—didn’t mean anything by it,” Donal said, his own intonation simultaneously condescending and conciliatory. “I’m just saying, Kat’s her own woman and anyway, you’re the one who left.”

Ivan was stunned wordless and could only manage to gape at Donal. He was truly about to blow a fuse. One more word from Donal, Captain Bloody Obvious, telling him about how his _beautiful_ wife was finally free of him, and he would lose it. His fingers were curling into fists so tight that his nails were cutting into his palms. He was practically vibrating, for all his attempt to hold his anger in—his nostrils were flaring, his eyes wide, mouth ajar.

Perhaps wisely, or at least with prescient timing, the seemingly oblivious Donal took the opportunity to excuse himself to the lavatory for a slash. Ivan, suddenly in a mad rush, took out his wallet and stuffed a few bills under his dirty plate. He had to get out of that pub before he imploded and took half of the neighborhood with it.

He was just getting into the BMW when Donal made the error of coming out after him. Didn’t have his coat on, so he likely had no intention of leaving. This was all for show, Ivan realized. Maybe Donal just needed to get a parting shot in, humiliate Ivan a bit further.. 

“Ivan! What’s up, man? Why are you—” Donal called, playing the kindly man, innocently coming out after his friend, who was having some kind of an episode.

Ivan whirled around, ready to unload. With a growl that almost came out as a warning, “Donal, if you know something, you must tell me. Is Katrina— _my wife_ —with someone?”

Donal twitched a little, and crossed his arms across his chest in resignation. He met Ivan’s glare with his beady eyes and gave him a noncommittal shrug. And then, a nod. And then, regrettably, he added, “Yeah, Ivan. She is. Don’t freak out, all right?”

Wild-eyed and finally reaching critical pressure in his core, Ivan pressed, “ _Who?_ ” Why was Donal looking at him like the answer was obvious?

When he replied to Ivan, as if he was entirely unaware of the effect his words would have, “ _Me_ , Ivan. Kat and I are … seeing each other. It’s new, but—”

Ivan lost it. He lunged the short distance between him and Donal before Donal even had a chance to finish his sentence, much less throw his hands up to block Ivan’s first punch. It was a good one, too—a right hook that connected solidly to Donal’s jaw. Reeling, Donal fell back directly onto his arse, right to the ground, swearing and spitting blood. If Ivan had gotten him in the temple, he might have laid him out in one go, but alas, Donal was still conscious. He scrambled to his feet and got in a defensive posture, one hand out as his other hand felt around in his mouth. That’s what had cut open Ivan’s knuckles: Donal’s teeth.

Taller and lankier than Ivan by some measure, Donal was also slow and drunk. Passive. He was a lover, not a fighter, he’d assured Ivan dozens of times over the previous ten years. Ivan had the advantage of being enraged, so he came at Donal again, once he was up. He landed a couple more punches, too, before Donal finally flailed at him in return, catching him by the jumper, using his superior reach to try to grab at Ivan’s clenched fists. They tripped over each other’s feet and went down as they grappled with each other, Ivan focused wholly on throwing quick, short jabs into Donal’s ribs. He caught a glancing blow on the cheek from Donal’s elbow, but it only barely registered in his mind amid all his blackout rage.

Every second that passed brought Ivan a new stab of horror: the image of Donal waking up in his bed, in his house, with Kat sprawled over him; the sickening betrayal of not knowing, of being in the dark; the blinding jealousy of them spending time together, laughing with the boys, his sons. She’d always thought Donal was a dolt! Wasn’t that right? Ivan’s dipshit mate at work. And now, now she was shagging him!

Ivan was going to kill Donal if he didn’t get away from him right that minute, so just as Donal was sloppily shouting about Ivan being a greedy dickhead, he rolled off his former friend and staggered back to his feet. Donal stayed down, still talking a never-ending load of shit even from the ground, but he didn’t attempt to stop Ivan from getting in his car or speeding off in a screech of tires and hollered insults.

He drove home instinctively. He had to know. He had to ask Kat if it was true. He did, and it was.

 

After that, however … everything changed. Because of the mess with Donal, there came the night with Katrina. One had to preclude the other. His explosive disaster turned into a glorious reunion with his wife. Ivan had driven to his former home in quite a state, but he left the next morning feeling like a new man.

Or, really, his old self. His Birmingham life was within reach again. Ivan could feel it. Arm’s reach. Kat wouldn’t let him stay until the boys got home from their sleepovers, disappointingly. Too complicated, just then, Ivan imagined. He was hoping he could share the good news with them himself, but it was probably more appropriate coming from their mum. Besides, he looked like hammered shit, surely. He’d squeezed in a bit more comfort before he got on the road, though: sweet dawn moments of holding a sleeping Katrina in his arms; taking a very grateful Bruno out to do his business in the backyard; making coffee and drinking it in his favorite mug; a hot shower.

Before he knew it, Ivan was back in his car, already feeling torn in two at leaving Birmingham. How could he be apart from Kat now? Because it was temporary—that was how.

Even if he was exhausted from the fight with Donal, as well as worn out by several rounds of intense and tender reunion sex with Katrina—getting too old for that sort of tosh—Ivan felt renewed. He had never felt so close to Kat as he had that morning, kissing her goodbye. He’d be back soon. He hadn’t said it, but he knew she felt it too: Ivan could finally come home to Birmingham.

And the timing couldn’t be better, as he’d shuffled his feet about finding a new place so Bethan could have her flat to herself. Good thing he’d waited, he thought. Now he had a place to go.

 _Didn’t I tell you, Dad? Didn’t I tell you that it would all be all right?_ Ivan’s conversation with his father’s ghost was also different. It wasn’t the same old tired line about how he’d set everything right, because now he’d done it. He’d gotten Katrina back.

He’d cried. She’d cried. It was beautiful. All was forgiven: Bethan, Donal, the lot of it. They’d loved each other hard enough for it to work, and now it they could get back to their life together.

Back in Islington, Ivan practically floated through the door. He was relieved to find that Bethan and the baby weren’t in, so he could have a moment to think about his next steps. He didn’t want to explain the marks on his face and knuckles, either. He simply wanted to come up with a plan: He’d put in notice at his disposable job. Set up a schedule with Bethan for him to be in London with Rosie regularly. Financial support. Fix a few loose fence boards in the garden space so Bethan wouldn’t worry.

Ivan was still tying up the last of his loose ends two days later, when a packet containing divorce filings from Katrina arrived via messenger. A phone call from Janet immediately followed, almost as if she was waiting for confirmation of the packet’s delivery. She wanted to know if Ivan had any questions for her, or for the lawyer that Katrina had engaged.

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ivan Locke bottoms up, bottoms out, and begins again.
> 
> This is the last bit of this story. Epilogue to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content/trigger warning: Suicidal ideation in first third of chapter

IVAN

 

When Ivan started driving, he hadn’t the foggiest idea of where he might end up. He couldn’t remember the last time that was the case.

He packed up the whole of his life in less than a half an hour, just two large duffle bags and a box of work ephemera—wasn’t much. Bethan trailed after him, room to room, fussing as he packed while half-trying to soothe a crying Rosie. She was worried; he’d been acting strange since he’d come back from Birmingham, she said, and now he’d gone and put in notice at his job without having anything else lined up. He was leaving London, just like that—leaving her and the baby, even when she’d clearly told him he didn’t need to rush to move out. It wasn’t like him, she said.

It was clear to Ivan, if no one else: He was the man who leaves, even with nowhere else to go. He attempted to console Rosie’s fussiness with a light tickle, but Bethan pulled her away in a protective but wholly unwarranted gesture. Ivan stepped back from them both and said, soberly, “It’ll be all right. Don’t worry. I’ll get everything sorted.”

He’d put up a front that he wasn’t going mad, that he wasn’t falling apart, because that’s what was required to get through it, but as soon as he got in his X5 estate car, the one with the long scratch down the side, he felt the panic start to settle in. He might as well’ve cleared a spot in the backseat for his dad—maybe in the space left empty by the car seat that he stowed in Bethan’s hall—because his voice was obnoxiously loud in Ivan’s head. Yes, him. Again. Every time things went to shit, the old man would drop in unannounced. Ivan couldn’t ignore him, as much as he’d like to.

_Not so high and mighty, are you now, son? Chip off the old block, right down to your trainers. Oh well._

“Fuck off,” Ivan said aloud.

_Locke blood is thick like mud. Can’t thin it out with anything but booze. So, let’s go round to the pub and have a pint._

No. Not yet and not here, Ivan thought. He couldn’t wait to get as far away from London as possible.

Leaving Islington in a daze, Ivan started driving west and stopped four hours later, when he couldn’t drive any further. Southerndown. In Wales. Whichever bastard it was that said you can’t go home again … Ivan would’ve liked to have a word with him.

Every sign on the drive was a portal to another part of Ivan’s past that was better forgotten. Such a desperate struggle it was to get out of Merthyr Tydfil, to get out of the spiral that he felt pulled into by several generation of hapless losers on both sides of his family tree. He’d prayed for a miracle to get him out. Waited. Fought. Lied. No miracle ever came for him, though, just years of repressing his familial instinct and insinuating himself into Katrina’s middle-class Birmingham life.

He’d made it, he thought. Out. But now there he was—driving the same roads of his youth, which he used to race down in cars that weren’t his, putting stuff up his nose that shouldn’t be there, never sober long enough to think anything through, raging against anything that he saw as an obstacle, which was everything. Years later, after he’d sobered up, Ivan tried, at his wife’s urging, to mentally reinvent the whole of Wales as a sweet backwards sort of place that he and Kat might enjoy as a holiday destination when Birmingham started to feel too much. He tried. For Katrina. But every time he was there, he felt himself unraveling just a little bit more. They knew him—a different version of him, maybe, but they could see through the artifice to the boy who grew up with nothing but a shit surname and a chip on his shoulder.

Kat was unaware of his reaction to being in Wales, being home. She thought that the tension between them any time they got near the M5 was solely because he was a grump who didn’t like to travel. Like that that long weekend in Cardiff, when his mum watched the boys as he and Katrina hibernated in a rented hotel room.

The memory of Katrina and him sequestered in their shabby room by the sea hit him like a wave of nausea as he passed by the route that would take him right back there. They’d been bickering incessantly about where to eat and what to do, but then they made up and found each other again, just like they always had. Remembering each other, making love for hours, sleeping, and waking up just to do it again. The more recent memory of being with Kat in his own bed was tied to the ones from Cardiff: the salt of her soft skin under his lips; the smell of her hair as it fell around them when she let it out of her elastic; the delicate bone of her jaw under his thumb as they kissed; waking up to her breath on his neck like he had thousands of mornings before.

Fucking over. Done. Divorce was the end of it. There would be no reunion. She was free of him.

 _Could beg her, like I begged your mum. Like I begged you._ Ivan Sr. had indeed begged both Ivan and his mum. He’d claimed everything was different—but even if it was, it didn’t matter, because the old tosspot had already ruined everything. Ivan had become a man in his absence.

“Tried that,” Ivan mumbled to the empty car. He glowered as he cut the engine as the car came to a stop. “Didn’t work.”

Ivan found himself at a pub. He’d get something to eat, something to drink and then he’d make a plan. Some hole in the wall in Southerdown, it was a peak Welsh establishment in that it was run-down and full of old men pretending not to be farmers out getting pissed in town; not a picturesque Welsh taproom in the way that tourists like. Therefore, no one paid attention to Ivan, which suited him fine while he ate a third of a chicken sandwich and drank four pints of lager.

Ivan wound up blearily deciding after beer four that the superior option would be the one in which he was around no one, especially not around men like his father, and—doubly so—any women that he could accidentally impregnate while blacked out. He bought a bottle at a nearby shop for himself, a bottle of Penderyn, and took off on foot to see the sea. A fine plan. He could smell the saltwater and it was still just barely light out. A thin haze of gloominess had settled in as soon as he’d passed Bristol, but he was pretty sure he’d be able to make it to the sea in time to catch the sunset.

It took Ivan longer than he’d expected to find his way, so the sun had gone below the horizon by the time he got to the cliffs. Sank into the Celtic Sea. Or the Atlantic. Wherever the sun went when it didn’t shine on Ivan. He’d made a considerable dent in the whisky while hiking down the farm roads and fields. Eventually, the roads had turned into dirt tracks which turned into a foot path, and then there he was, at the top of a cliff, with two shoddy, graffiti-covered benches overlooking the expanse of dark water. The concrete that anchored the bench legs was rubbish, he noted. Poking up out of the dirt like tumors, no drainage around them to keep the earth from settling. Someday soon, they’d topple right over. He sat on the more sturdy-looking of the two and took another swig of whisky.

It was as he sat down that the thought occurred to him: He should just top himself. Just end it. He’d do Katrina a favor by disappearing—she’d receive his life insurance and be free of him. Truly free. Wouldn’t have to spend money on a lawyer for a divorce, wouldn’t have to worry about him showing up at their old house, crying and pawing at her. She’d be a widow, as well. Everyone would feel sorry for her and she’d be free to do as she pleased without guilt or explanation. Ivan had seen it with his mum once his father had finally popped his clogs. Neighbors who hadn’t talked to her in years brought by cakes and pies, told her she was strong.

And Bethan … well, she’d be better off, as well. No Ivan there to muck up her flat with his sloppy bar antics or take up the lavatory while flogging it. No more of his embarrassing mistakes confronting her while on a walk with the baby.

 _But the boys_ , a voice in Ivan’s mind mumbled indistinctly—his father’s voice, perhaps, or maybe the part concerned with self-preservation. _And Rosie._

Little Rosie would be left with the shortest end of the stick. That was a sad thought. No name, no inheritance, no memory of him. At least his boys were old enough to remember the sound of his voice. That he’d tried to do right by them. He’d cared for them and tussled with them and laughed with them—all things that Ivan had wanted from his own father but never received.

What a relief it would be, then, for everyone to be free of him. Ivan had felt that sense himself, with his father finally dead. His death was a gift Ivan could give in return to his own family.

 _I didn’t even have the sack do that, son._ Ivan realized he must be successfully legless, if his father’s voice followed him all the way out to the cliffs. Usually it just manifested in the estate car.

“No, you didn’t,” Ivan agreed out loud, the words sounding clear in his mind but slurred to his ears.

It wouldn’t be difficult from that high up. Ivan employed his years of fairly accurate sight measurement to gauge how far it was from the top of the cliff to the dusky rocks below. Far enough. Just a running start and a header off the edge. Nothing and no one there to stop him. Surely, even Ivan could manage to not fuck that up.

 _But … Rosie. Sean. Eddie._ The voice in his mind persisted. Was it the Catholic in him that wouldn’t let him take the quick jog and the long leap? Ivan felt guilt swell up in him. This was the most pathetic he’d ever been, and he was rolling around in it like a dog in something dead. Sean. Eddie. Rosie. What if they saw him like this?

Out of spite, then. He’d stay alive out of spite, so no one else would raise his children. So he could prove himself. So Katrina and Bethan wouldn’t replace him—not completely. So Sean and Eddie wouldn’t grow up with the same rage in their hearts that he had. So Rosie would know the sound of his voice. So he might someday get a job that would enable him to steal parts of sky again. So that, sometime in the future, he would look back at this, his darkest hour, and realize he’d almost relinquished the chance to make everything OK again.

  
Ivan woke up retching at the dawn coming over the fields behind the bench. He’d puked against the bench’s seat back, and the sick coated the inner elbow of his fleece jacket. The smell of it made him retch again, even as he was rolling away from it, and he found himself falling. Ivan landed on his back in the dust in front of the bench. Worse, he’d landed on the bottle and it felt like getting punched in the kidneys.

It was surely a combination of the stress, the drinking and maybe a bad chicken sandwich. There was more sick threatening, so Ivan sat up quickly and leaned away from the bench—only to spew sweetened bile across the top of one of his trainers. He found he’d mysteriously taken care to remove his shoes and put his wallet and car keys in the left one in the process of getting absolutely hammered. Of course, that was the shoe that he’d puked on. The other one, empty of anything important, was a short throw away, mocking him with its pristine emptiness.

Disgusted by the smell, and disgusted with himself, Ivan sat on the bench that wasn’t covered in sick to put his shoes back on. He could feel the sun at his back, cutting through the coastal fog. He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt so empty in his life. This was it. This was the void.

What was all about about chucking himself off a cliff, last night? He remembered bits and pieces with a groan.

The cliff edge was still right there, unguarded—no obstacle between him and shattered oblivion on the rocks. Ivan stared into the distance, barely seeing through the thick mist of his own thoughts.

Ivan had already ruined nearly everything good in his life: his marriage, home, career—even his fresh start in London. But he hadn’t yet ruined his children. If he hadn’t done that, there was still hope.

Ivan’s walk of shame back into the little hamlet cleared his mind a bit. With every step, he felt a little less pathetic, despite his condition. That was rock bottom. Had to be. It had happened, so now he was able to make a plan about what would happen next.

But where was the bloody car? Had he driven it after eating in the pub? After buying that bottle? Ivan walked around the The Poet and the Patriot three times before he realized that his car wasn’t there. He asked a woman walking a dog for directions and headed to the center of town to the police station feeling like there was a storm cloud gathering over his head. Please let it be that the car has been towed. Please let it just have been towed to a lot somewhere.

Stolen, the police officers said. Guessed, really. "Not being funny, Mr. Locke, but especially a BMW. An X5!" There’d been a rash of car thefts that season, and the lead officer had an idea that it was probably the same group of thieves from Cardiff. Had he, by any chance, left his very nice car at the pub overnight? A sure target, if so.

Ivan nodded and looked at his watch, blinking dumbly. The officers seemed sympathetic to him, despite his stinking of vomit and his license saying he was from Birmingham.

Ivan filled out the police report and headed back to the pub for a giant mug of coffee. Everything he owned was in that car. All he had left, save for the clothes on his back, his wallet, his watch and his phone, which was at 7% power.

* * *

Ivan got off the bus nearest to his mum’s flat in Merthyr Tydfil and walked the six blocks through the part of town where they used to do their shopping. Everything was shabbier and more run-down than he remembered. Many of the shops were shuttered and the businesses that were open had seen better days.

It had been a while—months—since Ivan had spoken with his mother, much less visited. Even before everything went to shit, Ivan found it difficult to call his mother with any kind of regularity. He’d spent a lifetime trying to get away from Wales, from his family’s bullshit, from who and what he used to be. Katrina, really, was crucial to him keeping in any sort of touch with his mum, and since they’d split, he’d not rung her once.

His mother, Carys, opened the door to him in his wretched state, a worried look on her face. She looked the same as ever: the slightly dazed doe, caught in the headlights. Her hair was entirely white, finally. She’d colored it—“it’s strawberry blond, my natural color”—for decades but finally let it go. She was quite vain as a young woman, Ivan was told, and she’d felt her looks were wasted on a husband who never came home to her. She could have been a model, she herself professed, instead of a lowly school administrator. Whereas Ivan’s father had heavier features—the big lips that Ivan had inherited, along with the long nose, freckles, and the pronounced brow—Carys was all cheekbones and pale white skin, with a small, pointed nose and carefully arched eyebrows. Ivan was a clear mix of both of them when he was young, somehow the better sum of their two parts, but as he aged, he favored his father—Ivan, Sr.—which hacked him off.

“Ivan?” His mother looked past him, as if she was expecting to see someone beyond. The kids, maybe. Or Katrina. When no one popped out to surprise her, she looked at him with confusion in her eyes. He didn’t even have a bag with him.

“Yes, hello, Mum,” Ivan said, slightly shy and embarrassed. He felt like he was 15 years old, except markedly less angry and significantly more hungover.

Still in a house dress and slippers at noon, Carys straightened up taller and smiled warmly. “Oh, son. You look like you’ve been through it."

Where to begin, really? _Congrats, Mum, you have that granddaughter you’ve always wanted. Also my career is in ruins, Kat’s left me but only after I left her, I can’t stop drinking or fucking up, and now my car’s been stolen in bloody Wales, along with everything I own._

“I have,” Ivan agreed, looking down at his rumpled, dirty jeans and puke-crusted trainers. He smelled like shit, felt like shit, and possibly was shit. “I’m sorry I didn’t call ahead, Mum. I’ve had a bit of a bad night.”

A series of them, actually. For months, nothing but bad nights.

She shuffled backward and held the door for him, fanning her hand in front of her nose when he passed by. With a snicker, she protested, “Oh, dear. You’d best go straight in and hop in the bath, Ivan.”

Ivan and Carys moved into this flat after his father had disappeared long enough that his mum couldn’t afford the 3-bedroom semi on her own. Her salary at his school was meager but not without benefit to Ivan, as she disappeared his many absences in the system. He hated every second of living there, on that shitty street, with no garden, no garage, no place to escape the crushing banality of Merthyr Tydfil. It wasn’t his mum’s fault, of course—it was his father’s fault that they’d ended up living the way they did—but he hated it nonetheless.

In his mum’s lavatory, a barrage of sensory memories hit him one after the other: the embroidered hand towels that were just for show—absolutely not for drying your hands; the yellow glycerine soap that she favored, even though it reminded him of rendered chicken fat; her shampoos and hair products that smelled cloyingly of gardenia; a bathmat that he sank into, leaving imprints of his toes; the shag carpet toilet lid cover that made his balls physically crawl into his body if they so much as made contact with it; a dusty wall-hanging with seashells dangling off it, meant to remind the occupant of the lav that someone had gone to the sea at some point.

She’d kept some things for him in the second bedroom, Carys said, which was also her craft room, storage, and home to a decrepit old stationary bike that hadn’t seen use in years. There was whole dresser for Ivan and his family, actually: clothes left behind from earlier trips, Katrina’s lacy cotton knickers folded neatly next to a pair of pink socks that must also have been hers, Christmas pajamas, phone chargers they’d forgotten, books and unwrapped presents for the boys, old toys and rubbish they’d discarded before adolescence—Matchbox cars and rubber eyeballs and Happy Meal prizes. Ivan idly rummaged though everything, slowly picking out a phone charger to replace the one he’d lost with the car, spinning the wheel on a toy car and then gently touching the lace on Kat’s old panties. He stared at them, thinking. Would she ever come to visit Carys? Would it be odd if he mailed her the contents of the drawer? Dropped it by the house someday? The pain of not being able to go home to Birmingham had been opened up like a healing wound. Now he had to tend to it all over again.

Shaking off the image of him carrying around his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s pants in case he saw her, he investigated the bottom drawer, which was full of stuff Ivan left behind when he’d left home for good, which is how Ivan wound up wearing a decades-old Stüssy T-shirt—with a stretched-out neck and a rusty stain that he vaguely recalled as being blood—atop red flannel Christmas pajamas, and old woolen socks that seemed to be more fuzz than thread. He padded through the flat and started a load of laundry in the washer in his mum’s kitchen, throwing his shoes in as an afterthought. Better than scrubbing them at the sink and having to explain why he had vomit on his shoes.

Carys was already fussing, taking food out of her small refrigerator.

“Breakfast all right?” she offered, holding up bacon in one hand and a box of eggs in the other.

Ivan nodded gamely and took the eggs from her with one hand, using the other to guide her toward the table by her elbow. She’d still manage to burn the eggs if she cooked. “Yes, fine,” he acquiesced. “But I’ll do it. You sit.”

Over breakfast plates set upon his mum’s fraying Celtic tablecloth, Ivan felt obligated to explain the situation. But where to start? He hadn’t told her about leaving Birmingham, much less leaving London. He hadn’t told her anything—not about Rosie, not about Katrina, nothing.

“Mum, the car’s been stolen,” he explained flatly. “From Southerdown. Would it be all right if I stayed with you for a few days while I get it sorted?”

“Not the BMW, Ivan! Stolen? That’s terrible!” She clucked her tongue, almost as if it was inevitable—if you were to own a car, might as well expect it to be stolen. Softening a bit, she added, “You can stay as long as you need, love.”

Carys picked up her teacup and waited for Ivan’s full attention. She asked, with a somewhat leading tone, “Have you found some work out here, then? I know you were looking for something nearer to London.”

He must have looked baffled as to how she knew anything of the sort, because his mum set down her tea and sighed with resignation. She explained, “Ivan, I’ve spoken with Katrina. I know you’re living in London.”

Ivan swallowed his food and wiped his mouth with the paper towel that his mother laid out at every meal. So, there it was. She knew.

His lips twitched a little as he began to deny it, but there was no use. “Yes, I’ve been living in London for a while. Katrina and I …”

“She told me that the two of you were having troubles and that you’d gone to London to find work and take a break from your life in Birmingham.”

That was one way of looking at it. A “break.” Ivan’s chest grew tight with anxiety.

“And you’ve been let go from your concrete job?”

Ashamed, Ivan looked down at his plate and nodded.

“Is that all, son?”

Ivan raised his head, wildly uncomfortable with the discussion. Of course that wasn’t it. There was so much more. Every detail more humiliating and shameful than the one that preceded it.

“Mum, I’m sorry. I’ve been laid low, as of late, and I just didn’t—”

Carys interrupted him, her tone growing sharper. “Katrina also said you’ve taken up drinking again. Not that you could have kept that a secret—you smelled like a pub toilet when you walked in here.”

Ivan looked at the ceiling out of sheer desperation to not look at his mother. Coming here was a mistake, Ivan realized. He had nowhere else to go, though. Merthyr Tydfil was the end of the line, especially now that he truly had nothing.

“It really took me back, Ivan,” his mom said, disapproval clouding her tone. “You’re so much like your father.”

Ivan was stunned, and left blinking at her in shock. He felt like he’d been punched in the throat, because he knew it was true. Twenty-five years of waiting, in one form or another—that’s how long she spent waiting for his father to get his shit together.

“I didn’t know that Katrina and you had … uh, discussed what I was doing,” he said icily. Another thing that Kat was good at, that had always eluded Ivan: being an active, engaged member of the family. She was close with her own mum, as were her sisters, talking with them all weekly, so it followed that she’d been good about keeping up with her mother-in-law. “When did you last speak?”

Had she mentioned that he’d finally gone home? That they’d spent the night together, made love, cried together? That he’d ripped his beating heart out of his own chest and handed it to Katrina, only to have her serve him with divorce papers days later? Did she tell his mum that?

“Weekend before last,” Carys replied, sounding smug. So, no, then. She had old intel, sorry to say. He wasn’t about to update her with this most recent heartbreak. His mum looked at him expectantly, searching his face for something that she probably also looked for in his father’s face, 20 years ago. “Ivan, your drinking—”

“I know, Mum.”

“Your drinking, your problem with drink—it’s not entirely your fault. It’s hereditary, you know. Your father had … well, you were there. Perhaps—”

“I’m done with it, now, Mum. I’m quitting it,” Ivan assured her hastily. He was, too. It wasn’t just the hangover speaking. Ivan began to stand and then remembered that it was his mother’s house and he was use his manners. “May I be excused?”

His mother shook her head and looked at him sternly. “Not just yet, Ivan. I need to know: Have you hit someone while you were drunk?”

The evidence of his fistfight with Donal was definitely still apparent on his face, although the bruise had faded and the cut mostly healed. It wasn’t the first time in his Merthyr Tydfil life that he’d come home with a split lip or a black eye, but it had been a solid 20 years.

“Mum—” Ivan began to protest, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. He could feel his ears go red.

“Katrina?”

“No, never. I wouldn’t, not ever.”

“The boys?”

“No, I’d never raise a hand to them—you know that.”

She threw up her hands and expressed a lungful of air in relief, as if to say that all the hard work was out of the way. “Good. I had to ask! For my safety.”

Her what? Ivan was flummoxed. “Did Kat say—”

She wouldn’t, would she? No matter how angry she got with him, Kat wouldn’t lie and say he hit her—would she?

Carys shook her head and grimaced, “No, no. Nothing like that. She wouldn’t have told me if you had, I expect. I just … as I said, these things are hereditary. You know how your father got when he was drinking.”

Ivan did know, yes. There wasn’t a time when he was still drinking that Ivan Sr. didn’t express his anger or frustration in a physical way. Ivan took after him in that respect, certainly, but never ever at the expense of his family. He couldn’t stomach the idea of them fearing him.

“So, what then? Is your car actually stolen or have you crashed it?”

He felt like all of the air in his body was being squeezed out by a giant invisible vise. “The car was stolen.” He searched for a semblance of explanation. A start to one, anyway. “Until yesterday, I was living in London. In a flat. A very nice one, in Islington.”

“That’s exactly what Katrina said,” she confirmed, looking satisfied with her intel. “What do you mean ‘until yesterday’? Where will you live now?”

“I’ll know more after I get the car sorted, Mum.”

“You should stay here. Sort yourself out, too,” she resolved, the concern on her face reverting back to her stock stern expression. “Don’t worry about the BMW. It was a very nice car but you must have it insured?”

Ivan nodded once but stayed silent and fiddled idly with the edge of his plate, thinking. Sort himself out— _here_? Staying with Carys, recovering in Merthyr Tydfil, even just being in Wales for more than 36 hours: any of those things might be the end of him. But he was rapidly running out of options.

“What happened, Ivan? With Katrina?” Carys asked, sounding bereft. She doted on Katrina, who happily listened to her boring stories about nothing. His mom went on: “You seemed so happy together.”

That statement, about being happy, from a woman who’d never seen a day of happiness in her marriage, almost bounced off him. Who was that man she was talking about? The one who was so happy with Katrina?

“We were happy, Mum.” He pushed his plate away. “I was happy, anyway. But I made a mistake. A terrible mistake. I’ve—ugh, I’m sorry. I don’t know how to put it.”

He couldn’t summon the courage to say it, so in the end, Ivan withdrew his phone from the pocket of his PJs and showed his mother a photograph of little Rosie.

“She’s mine,” he admitted, hoping that the sweet baby photo would soften the blow. “I—it was last winter. A woman, the same woman I was staying with in Islington. I eventually told Kat but it was too late. And then …”

His mother’s face fell. She went from squinting at the photo to touching the screen as if testing for its authenticity.

“That’s Rosie, Mum,” Ivan murmured gently, hoping he could keep this as mild as possible. “That’s your …”

He didn’t finish the statement, because he could see from her expression that she understood. Guess Kat hadn’t told her that, then?

Abruptly, his mom recoiled from him—from the whole table, from the photo of Rosie, from the reality of the situation. For a moment, it flashed through his mind that his mother wanted him out of her house. Where would he go then?

With a trembling index finger pointing straight up to the light fixture above their heads, his mother raised her voice only slightly, but it was enough for Ivan to know she was dead serious and had enough of his confession. She shakily informed Ivan that she was going to have a lie-down. Then, she added, “And when your clothes are clean, Ivan, we’re going to St. Mary’s. I won’t hear any argument from you.”

Ivan wasn’t sure how the church was going to help—it certainly hadn’t helped him get out of Wales in the first place—but he didn’t argue.

The next thing he knew, he was taking the bus to St. Mary’s with his mother. The bus. With his mother.

Carys didn’t want him to pray, didn’t want him to confess. Not just yet. He wasn’t ready, not with booze still coming out of his pores. All that would come later. First, his mum wanted him to go to the 5 p.m. Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the basement, a circle of chairs in the catechism school room where he’d long-ago studied shabby felt cutouts of the apostles pressed against a giant green background. His mother had spent every Tuesday and Thursday evening of his childhood going to her own Al-Anon meetings in that same basement room, trying to find a way to accept that Ivan Sr.’s drinking was his own burden, not hers. She would wait upstairs and pray for his recovery.

* * *

A couple of weeks into going to an AA meeting every day, part of the 30 meetings in 30 days that he’d committed himself to, a big, bearded guy gave him a funny sideways look while Ivan poured hot water from a white fluted carafe into a styrofoam cup before the meeting.

When Ivan looked back at him with a confused squint, the guy broke into a wide grin and said, “Oh shit, mate.”

Ivan turned around to see if he was talking to someone else, but it was clear that he was known to this person.

“Sorry?” Ivan was very aware that his accent stuck out like a sore thumb in these spaces. He was able to convince people outside of Wales that he was middle class, but in Merthyr Tydfil, there was no hiding that it was a bit of a put-on. He had to reverse engineer his way of speaking to blend in again, but it didn’t always come naturally. In fact, his apology came out prissy and pinched.

“Weasel?” The bloke asked in an amused, hushed whisper, his eyes lighting up.

Weasel was a passing nickname from when Ivan was a skinny little twerp breaking into cars and getting twisted on Bacardi. The nickname didn’t stick. Or, more accurately, the persona didn’t stick around and ultimately, neither did Ivan. He hadn’t seen anyone that would have known him as Weasel since he left Merthyr Tydfil. This bloke looked a little familiar, but Ivan couldn’t place him at first. The man’s laugh was loud and deep in the basement of the church. No one laughed like that at a meeting for alcoholics, did they?

Ivan snorted with laughter, too, despite himself. “Weasel! Good lord. Sorry, man. Do I know you?”

“I can’t believe my eyes. You look …” The man paused dramatically, sizing Ivan up. He didn’t seem to notice Ivan’s accent one way or another.

Ivan actually prayed that this guy wasn’t about to say he looked like his father. The days with his mum were wearing on him. She took every opportunity she could to remind him that he was like Ivan Sr.

“You look the exact same,” he finished. “Only with a beard, finally. Little Ivan Locke! No way. Fuckin’ hell, that’s a nice watch, man. You’re doing all right, then?”

He glanced down at his watch, peeking out from his shirtsleeve, and a memory dawned on him. The man’s voice, more than anything. That laugh. “I guess. Oh, wait—shit, is it … are you Kenny Williams?”

“Just Ken now, but yeah. In the flesh.” Ken set the doughnut in one hand onto the lid of his own styrofoam cup so he could shake Ivan’s hand. “Fuck, this is supposed to be anonymous, isn’t it? I just had to see if it was really you. Haven’t seen you in an age.”

Ivan smiled amicably, gripping Ken’s hand and looking him over. The guy had seen many, many doughnuts and hard years since Ivan had last seen him but his sense of humor seemed to be intact. “Right, the ‘anonymous’ bit. Oh well. Fucking ‘Weasel’! Nobody’s called me that for years, mate.”

The meeting was about to start up again. He wasn’t particularly fond of these meetings but he hadn’t had a drink since that night on the cliffs, so apparently they were doing him some good. Seeing a semi-familiar face cheered him up considerably.

Ken shrugged and lifted an eyebrow. “Want to get coffee after?”

“Yeah, sure,” Ivan agreed. He was starved for company. He hadn’t talked to anyone outside of his mother for days and days. Ken, as it all came back to him, had been a couple of years ahead in school from Ivan, but he remembered him as being a good bloke. “Sounds good.”

 

Before he knew it, he was folding himself into Kenny’s beat-up MGB with a ragtop that wouldn’t have repelled even the softest rain. No wonder it smelled of mildew. How someone twice Ivan’s size fit himself behind the steering wheel was a miracle.

When Ken started it up it sounded like a dozen leaf blowers going at once. Ivan found himself grinning. “Wow, this thing sounds like shit! Are you telling me it actually drives?” he shouted.

Ken barked out a loud guffaw, and clunked the car into gear. “Yeah yeah. Don’t you worry, little Weasel. I’m a professional!”

During a short but harrowing ride, in which Ivan repeatedly pleaded to not be called Weasel ever again, he learned that Ken had become a mechanic. They soon after ensconced themselves in a cafe, trying to figure out which mates they had in common, who they’d partied with, how many times they’d crossed paths.

“It’s good you got out of here, man,” Ken said, stirring his coffee with a wooden swizzle stick. “The whole fuckin’ town went to real shit in the late ‘90s. Where’d you end up, anyway? Oh my god, my little sister Agnes had the biggest crush on you. Did you know? Said you could’ve been a model. Or a movie star. She was in your year, I think? Wouldn’t fucking shut up about how hot you were, if I remember.” Ivan’s ears turned red and he cleared his throat in embarrassment.

Ken didn’t skip a beat though. “Aggie just about shit herself when Mark—You remember my brother, right? Ugly fucker? Looks just like me?—said he heard you were a big deal in construction. Driving a Bentley, or something?”

Ivan was choking with laughter at Ken and almost snorted coffee out of his nose. He managed to cough out: “A Bentley? No. I was driving an X5, though. Up until a couple weeks ago. It got stolen in Southerdown.”

“No! NO! Not an X5! Shit, mate. That sucks. Probably some fucking kids just like we were back in the day. Hey, weren’t you with me, Mark and Tweaky PJ when we broke into that giant caravan and partied all weekend?” Ken’s eyes lit up again. It was clear that he remembered the Methyr Tydfil of days gone by much more fondly than Ivan did.

Ivan shook his head, grinning. “Wasn’t me, but it sounds like a good story.”

Ken shrugged and waved his hand as if to dismiss the nostalgia. “Anyway, sorry. Where, up north?”

“Ah, Birmingham. Worked construction there and then got into concrete and worked all over. What about you?” Ivan remembered Ken as always being a big man, both literally and figuratively. Always going twice as hard as anyone else at the party, always the first one to jump into the fray in a fight, always the one who with the best drugs, always with that booming laugh.

Ken shrugged and emptied another sugar packet into his coffee, which was probably nearly solid, for all the sugar he’d added. “Oh you know. The old story. Hooked up with a girl from Cardiff that worked at the pub where I was bouncing, had a couple of kids. Legal trouble. Knee surgery. Started wrenching at my uncle’s car dealership. More stress. More poorly conceived coping mechanisms. Anyway, she fucked off two years ago. She was sick of my shit. And here I am.”

Here they were. In Merthyr Tydfil, laughing over coffees. Ivan felt better than he had for quite a while.

Ken asked, “What about you? What are you doing back here? You were off like a fucking shot after school. I see your mum around sometimes. Good old Mrs. Locke. Fuck, should have written her a letter, for all the times I lied to her to get out of school!”

His laugh rolled across the cafe like a thunderclap. Everyone who went to that school lied to the office lady. Even Ivan, even though she was his own mum. Especially.

“Ah, just here until I get the car sorted out,” Ivan said. “After that, I’m not sure. Look for work, I guess, move where that takes me. Get out of mum’s flat, as she’s driving me mad.”

“Aw, no, you can’t live with Mrs Locke—no offense. We’ll find you a place by the sea. There’s loads of them in the low season. Do you surf?” Everything that came out of Ken’s mouth sounded like a joke, the way he said it. Ivan laughed and wrinkled his nose. As an afterthought, Ken asked, offhandedly, “Didn’t you get married? Have some kids?”

Out of habit, Ivan replied, “Yes, two boys.” Then he flinched and closed his eyes for a moment, changing the mood considerably. Correcting himself, he amended, “Three. Two boys and a girl.”

“Oh, sorry, mate. Did I say something … off?”

“No, no. It’s fine. It’s a long story.”

Ivan scratched the side of his temple and mentally tallied the high and low points of the last twenty years of his life: marrying Katrina, the birth of his boys, his beautiful buildings, the sweet successes, the house and the cars, the creature comforts, and then his fuckup, the subsequent driving, the endless miles, little Rosie, London, and the Squalor Vic, the ghost of his father plaguing him, his mother’s sad anger, the cycle of depression and addiction and abuse and artifice and broken promises.

How does one tell a story before it’s resolved? When it’s still in the process of becoming OK but long before it’s actually OK? When it’s still quite shit, in fact?

Ken settled back into his overstuffed chair and gamely said he liked long stories, long as they were well told. He’d recently gotten into audiobooks, he added, and he was pretty sure that whatever story Ivan “Weasel” Locke had to tell would be more interesting than _Moby Dick_.

* * *

Ivan’s estate car, the X5, turned up eventually, smashed all to hell. None of Ivan’s belongings were in it any longer, aside from his hardhat, which was ruined on account of some miscreant pissing in it. Staying in Wales all that time must have had its advantages, because with Ken’s insider knowledge and access to a fairly large network, Ivan managed to secure another BMW with his insurance payout. Some twat whose luck had seen better days traded the car in in on a three series lease, Ken said.

Used, the sleek black car came to Ivan at a good price, which would leave Ivan plenty of money to move into his own cottage outside Mumbles, by the sea—also thanks to a connection through Ken. Ivan was humbled and grateful that his new old friend had stepped up so fully to help him out. Maybe Ken could magically pull a good job out of his arse, too, while he was at it, Ivan joked, all the while formulating a plan in the back of his mind.

At any rate, a used M5 was still a beautiful car, even at 15 years old. Sean and Eddie would certainly be impressed, Ivan imagined. And there were four doors, so it wouldn’t be difficult to get a carseat in for Rosie. There would be a lot of driving to come for Ivan, in the years ahead, so he might as well enjoy the drive.

The Locke name was mud when Ivan first left Merthyr Tydfil, years before, but he’d built it up to something close to respectable. It wasn’t easy to hold his head up in Wales, when he’d brought himself so low. Every day was a struggle, especially in that first month of AA meetings and divorce proceedings. But, Ivan had to admit, even as low as he’d gone, he was still doing better than his forebears. He still had his work ethic. He had his own hair. He now had his sobriety. He had his skills, his C.V. He had his children’s love, even if it was at a distance.

Despite all of it, despite failing as a husband, a son, and a construction manager, Ivan was sure he still had it in him to be a good father to his children. A better Ivan Locke than the one who came before him.

Ivan shifted the used BMW into gear and headed out of Merthyr Tydfil. He had a cottage to furnish, a meeting to attend, an arrangement to see his sons (and, on the return trip, his daughter), and a life to rebuild. Perhaps his father’s ghost had been demolished along with the old car, because, as Ivan hit the road, there was no criticism from the empty back seat.

Ivan listened carefully, half expecting to hear it, but there was nothing. He was on his own.

 

THE END

(until the forthcoming epilogue)


	11. EPILOGUE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five years on, Ivan Locke sorts it all out enough to let someone new in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The epilogue that no one needed but a couple of us wanted. I wasn't ready to let Ivan go just yet! I wanted to write this giant, cheesy wish-fulfillment epilogue in order to comfort Ivan (and me) after all the suffering I'd put us both through. Again, so much love and gratitude to my fic wife, TheAstronomer, for all the Britchecks and notes and support. Couldn't have done this without you, and I hope you like your present.

IVAN

The first two times that Bruno rode in the backseat of Ivan Locke’s brand-new BMW, Ivan could not relax. The dog’s claws were sure to scratch the upholstery and he was slobbering all over the inside of the windows. It wouldn’t have been a problem in the used M5 he bought off Ken’s friend, but that had shit the bed for good after Ivan added significant mileage to the odometer. He couldn’t really see himself leasing something that would occasionally carry around his carsick daughter, Rosie, so he dug into his savings and put some money down.

That’s why Ivan was on edge the whole drive from Birmingham back to his cottage in Mumbles. There was likely to be fur in the deepest recesses of the interior, he stewed, as Bruno seemed to shed twice as fast when he was nervous. So, yes, Ivan already regretted that he agreed to take the dog for a week. He did it out of good faith, so Katrina wouldn’t have to pay for a kennel for seven nights while her boyfriend, Alex, took her and the boys to Greece on holiday. Part of him knew that Bruno would make his seaside house more of a home if he weren’t the only thing living in it most nights.

After the third time that he brought the dog down to his cottage in Wales, for a similar reason to the first and the second—Katrina had learned she loved to travel now that she was very nearly an empty-nester—Ivan asked gently if Kat might consider letting Bruno live out his last years with him. She teared up a little over the phone but reluctantly agreed it might be best for everyone. She’d ask Eddie, who was closest to the dog, but didn’t think he’d mind, as he had plans to move into a flat with his friends as soon he was at university. Plus, Bruno had no patience for Alex’s French bulldog, who only wanted to play.

That’s how Bruno came to live with Ivan for good.

* * *

Wednesday nights, Ivan liked to go to an AA meeting in Mumbles and get dinner by himself in a pub that always had football on. Friday mornings, he tried to get to London as early as possible, to see Rosie off to daycare if he could manage. Bethan started working again, saying that being home with only a baby to talk to was driving her mad, so the best way that Ivan could be useful was often picking Rosie up. He and Bethan tried to eat dinner together, the three of them, as much as possible. As before, as long as they had Rosie to talk to and about, they were never hurting for conversation, despite Ivan’s lack of knowledge about theater and Bethan’s lack of interest in his personal life.

Rosie was obsessed with unicorns, Disney princesses, her daddy, and the cat that Bethan had adopted, called Mumbles. What the little girl wanted most was for Ivan to sit crisscross applesauce on the floor of her room and watch her put on plays with her stuffed animals serving as actors. However, when it came time to bathe or go to bed, she only wanted Bethan. That’s one reason among many why Bethan wasn’t quite ready to let Ivan take Rosie for the weekend. Rosie was very attached to her, she said. Clingy, even. Ivan nodded when she said that, knowing that it was also true that Bethan was incredibly attached to Rosie and not quite ready to let her go for even a night.

Saturdays, when at all possible, Ivan spent in Birmingham, with the boys. Sometimes it was just for the length of time it took for them to share a meal, sometimes it was for an event, and occasionally, he picked up Sean or Eddie, or both, and the three of them went somewhere together. When Sean started driving, he could be convinced to drive his brother down to Wales in Kat’s old Corsa for the weekend.

On Sundays, Ivan went surfing. That was only after Ken Williams made good on his joke about Ivan getting a place by the sea and learning to surf when his friend bought them both a lesson for Ivan’s 38th birthday. Ken didn’t stick with it, saying he didn’t particularly enjoy waking at the asscrack of dawn just to drive over to Llangennith, freeze his testes off in the ocean, get saltwater up his nose, and be nagged by Ivan that he wasn’t paddling hard enough.

“Oh, but I nag because I care, Ken,” Ivan snorted, laughing at his friend’s glare.

Ken and his magnificent beard all full of salt wasn’t having it. “Aw, do you? What a romantic you are,” he said back, sardonically, before he tried to clear his sinuses in various ways. Ivan paddled away from Ken’s disgusting comedy as he heard Ken call after him: “Give us a kiss, Ivan.”

Ivan liked surfing, with or without Ken. Mostly without. It was peaceful. A puzzle and a challenge that changed every week. It was work, but it was not work. It was exercise and physical, but it was also maths and timetables. Ivan was hooked.

For Ivan’s 40th birthday, Ken bought him a rehabbed longboard with “Weasel” painted in flowery script on the nose.

“Do you love it? Classy, innit?” he’d said, proudly handing the gift over to Ivan, who couldn’t stop laughing. How Ken made it from Merthyr Tydfil to Mumbles with eight feet of surfboard sticking out of his convertible, Ivan would never know.

“Yeah, mate, I love it,” he admitted, and ordered his own wetsuit the next day.

* * *

Ivan met Jessica on a job site, two years into his return to Wales. His business partners (Barry and Gina, a lovely couple from Surrey who flipped houses into vacation rentals) had him overseeing a complete remodel of a former carriage house outside of Swansea, which, of course, Ivan wound up micromanaging so bad that he put himself in charge of tile work.

He was practically in a meditative state, lining up tiles and re-orienting them so they’d create a secondary pattern once they were set in place in the cement. When he heard voices coming through the front entry of the cottage, rising out of his reverie was like he was surfacing from a deep pond. It was Barry with the estate agent scheduled to value the property that morning. It wasn’t his ordinary estate agent, however—this agent was a woman.

Three things struck Ivan when he first saw Jessica carefully stepping over a tangle of plastic sheeting left behind by the flooring guy: 1) she was exceptionally lovely—even for an estate agent, people who seemed to be attractive by trade, 2) she was wearing stilettos with heels that could only properly be described as lethal, and 3) he hadn’t been with a woman in over three years.

He’d been living like a monk as he built up his business, drove all over the country, and focused on maintaining his sobriety. Nothing so much as a date or overt flirtation, as penance.

Ivan almost fumbled the putty knife, but instead folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the bones of what would be the kitchen counter once the marble came in. He tried to look casual, as if he he weren’t gawking at a pretty girl, like some cliche workman in boots and dusty Carhartts.

Barry, who had Jessica’s elbow in his hand (the lucky sod) in order to guide her around obstacles, saw Ivan before Jessica did.

“Oh, hello, Ivan. Sorry. I didn’t realize you’d be here,” Barry said cheerily, clearly not bothered by Ivan’s presence. He was a good bloke, mid-60s or so. Drove a Jaguar. He scanned the room quickly. “Where’s Claude?”

Ivan cleared his throat and nodded in the direction of the back garden. He felt painfully shy in front of this beautiful woman, but he managed to explain: “I’ve asked him to start distributing the brick for the terracing. He’s just out in the, uh, garden.”

Barry nodded amiably, releasing the woman’s elbow so he could gesture at Ivan. Barry said, “Jessica, this is Ivan, our partner. He’s general manager on our renos, so you’ll probably see him skulking about the various homes.”

Ivan, suddenly extremely self-conscious that his hair was sticking up, flinched a little at his title, trying to remind himself that he was—despite working directly on this renovation—the couple’s partner. Not an equal partner just yet, but someday. His dirty hands were temporary.

Barry went on. “Ivan, this is Jessica, our new estate agent. Gerald has enough on his plate with our eastern properties, so we’ve brought on Jessica.”

Honestly, Gerald could fuck off forever. Ivan could barely remember him, and he already preferred Jessica. Ivan took a visual inventory of her as quickly and subtly as he could: shoes were—again—lethal, almost painfully sexy; long legs disappearing into a neatly pressed skirt; curvy hips, small shoulders; beautifully shiny, long dark hair; smooth olive skin; bright, almond-shaped eyes with small crinkles at the edges; charming dimples at either side of her mouth; glossy lips slightly parted in a half smile. He noticed her eyes flicker over him, too—almost as if she was surprised to see him there—so Ivan unconsciously smoothed his hair with his free hand, wishing he wasn’t wearing his scrubbiest getup.

 _Was there … something there, in that look?_ _Was she checking him out?_ He didn’t trust his judgment. _Quit fucking with your hair, mate. She’s probably got someone._

Wiping his fingers on the rough mustard-colored fabric of his heavy-duty jeans, Ivan quickly stretched his hand out to meet hers, trying very hard to not look at her shoes. _Focus on her face. Eyes, not mouth._ It was a nice face to focus on, so he managed. “Pleasure to meet you,” he said, trying not to sound as shy as he felt. It had been so long since he’d been drawn to someone this way. 

“Ivan?” She asked, by way of confirmation, but Ivan, knob that he was, took it as if she was about to ask him a question.

“Yes?” He replied eagerly. _Well, at least now she knew he was an idiot._ Ivan felt his face flush red and tried to cover for his gaff by confirming that he also had learned her name. “Uh, Jessica. Yes. Pleasure.” _Oh, good, said it twice._

Jessica broke into a wide grin and that time he caught it: She’d decidedly glanced at his mouth before meeting his gaze again.

 

The next day, Jessica reappeared without Barry. Ivan was in the back garden when she arrived. He was crouched down, helping the landscaper pull out a particularly tenacious stump, when he saw a flash of yellow raincoat coming out from the back of the house. It was Jessica, holding aloft a stainless steel coffee mug in one hand and a steaming to-go cup in the other, looking extremely cute. Ivan was not looking cute, he was sure of it. He probably looked like a drowned rat, soaked to the skin and muddy after getting caught in that mid-afternoon summer shower.

After asking Marco if they might try again in a little bit, once the rain had let up and the earth was loosened by the water, Ivan made his way through the garden and up the steps to the back patio. Jessica started to explain why she was there, but Ivan hastily opened the back door for her and ushered her inside.

“I forgot my coffee cup. Yesterday,” she told him, throwing the hood of her raincoat off with a toss of her head. She was breathless and flushed in the cheeks as she held the to-go cup out to him. Jessica’s voice was sweet and kind as she added, “And I figured if I was coming by, I might as well bring you one.”

“Oh, cheers, that’s … thank you,” Ivan sputtered, trying to wipe the rain off his face with one hand while he accepted the cup with the other. He was literally dripping water and shifted uncomfortably. He couldn’t stand being wet outside of the context of surfing. “That’s—ah. One moment.”

He quickly set the coffee cup down on a crate and dashed into the adjacent room—someday it would be a parlor—to rummage around in his backpack, where he’d stored a dry T-shirt. Without excusing himself, Ivan knelt down by the bag, his back to Jessica, and quickly stripped off his shirt and pulled on the other, using the wet shirt to wipe off his face as best he could. 

When he stood up and turned to head back into the kitchen, where he’d left Jessica, Ivan found her hastily trying to make it look like she hadn’t been peeking around the corner at him as he changed into a dry shirt. He fought the urge to react but he couldn’t control his ears getting hot.

Standing at the counter, Jessica said something about interrupting him.

“Not at all. I needed a break,” Ivan assured her. She didn’t have a wedding ring on. In fact, no rings and hardly any jewelry. She looked posh but wild, like she’d just come from a fox hunt or stepped off some windswept moor that added a flush to her cheeks. He added, “I’m very grateful for the coffee.”

“Oh, good. And I found my cup,” she said, laughing nervously, swirling her insulated mug.

“Yes,” Ivan finally smiled. “I see that.”

 

The next time Ivan saw Jessica, she’d come by the cottage because she’d neglected to measure the area taken up by the upstairs office. She brought him a coffee again. She was wearing a yellow sundress that showed off her tan, freckled shoulders, and had on matching yellow heels with tiny black bows on them. They were simultaneously the most ridiculous and sexiest things he’d ever seen and he briefly fantasized about biting them off of her tiny, gorgeous feet. The next week, the routine continued: heels, coffee, conversation.

Then, at the end of the month, as Ivan was wrapping up the last of kitchen, she once again came by with Barry to admire Ivan’s hard work and value the nearly complete property. She handed Ivan his coffee, which he’d become quite dependent on, and mentioned her firm needed more information about some spigot or something blah blah blah. While she busied herself with taking notes, Ivan took Barry into the basement to show him that the floor heating unit was flawless and ready to go.

While they were downstairs, with Jessica’s heels clicking above their heads, Barry clapped a hand on Ivan’s shoulder and murmured, “Why don’t you just ask her to go for a drink?”

Ivan frowned. Quickly glancing behind him to make sure that she hadn’t followed them down to the basement, he turned to look doubtfully at Barry. He wasn’t keen to mention why a drink might not be the best idea, so he shrugged off the suggestion. “Who? Jessica? Nah. She’s a bit out of my league, isn’t she?”

Barry rolled his eyes. “Don’t be foolish. She asked me about you.”

Ivan felt a jolt at that. The idea made him nervous. What did she ask? What would Barry say about him?

He reluctantly replied: “She’s single, then?”

Barry patted him on the back a couple more times and advised, “You should ask her out and see.”

Three minutes later, as Ivan was showing him the meticulously labeled electrical panel, Barry slyly answered Ivan’s unasked question: “She asked the same thing about you, Locke. So, yes: single.”

 

Ivan wasn’t sure he’d asked anyone out on a date, possibly ever. He and Kat were so young when they found each other, just kids, really, and he’d latched on so quickly. They hadn’t really had the need or the chance to go on preliminary dates after they met at a pub, each of them with a group that had a few friends in common. The next thing he knew, he’d put a baby in her and they were moving in together. But that was two decades ago. It was different then. With Jessica, someone new, it was torture—him going over in his mind how he’d ask her, what he’d ask, how she’d react, what they’d talk about if she consented to a date, how he’d manage to calm his nerves, how he’d get close enough to smell her without the benefit of alcohol as a bolster.

Jessica replied without hesitation that she’d love to go to lunch with him and before he knew it, Ivan found himself across from her on a sunny patio, trying very hard not to gawk at her high heels through the glass table between them. They were pure evil: black and perfect and completely inappropriate for the brick patio. Ivan fiddled with his sunglasses, taking them off and folding them. Unfolding them and then putting them back on, before deciding it was rude to have them on, considering that her own sunglasses were nestled in her hair. After ordering, Jessica was telling him about a silly issue with another agent’s client, when she paused mid-sentence to ask him if he was all right.

“You’re quiet over there, Ivan,” she observed, smiling encouragingly. “Am I talking too much?”

“No, no, not at all,” Ivan replied, hooking his sunglasses into the collar of his shirt so he’d stop fidgeting with them. “I like it. Go on?”

“Are you sure? Okay. Well, then he said—”

Ivan immediately interrupted her: “I don’t drink.” It sounded stupid, now that it was out of his mouth and he swiped at his beard as if it might erase his outburst.

“Sorry?” Jessica asked, concerned. She tilted her head and her lips pursed as if she’d just realized an error. She leaned forward and added with a shake of her head: “Oh. No. Of course. I’m sorry—I’ve just ordered wine. I didn’t—”

“No,” Ivan explained, “it’s fine. You can. And should! But I can’t. I didn’t mean to just come out with that. I’m just—” He paused to take a deep breath. “It’s been, ahem, it’s been a long time and I’ve gone a bit feral, I think. You make me—argh—you make me nervous. You’re very beautiful—and I like … your … shoes.”

Jessica beamed from across the table, even after his inane stammering, and visibly relaxed in her patio chair. After a quick glance at her feet, as if she needed a reminder of which shoes she had on, she admitted, “Well, thank you. Also, that’s why I ordered wine, Ivan. I’m nervous, too.”

After they’d owned up to their nervousness, and by the time Jessica’s wine and his ice water had come so they both had something to do with their hands, conversation flowed more easily. In rapid order, Ivan learned about how she’d ended up in Wales, that she’d been married once before, to an American, that she loved horses and wanted to be a professional rider until she’d had a fall and broken her pelvis. That the marriage had broken up because they’d both wanted babies but she couldn’t carry them, and he’d decided a family was what he wanted more than being married to her. And that she’d been on her own since, working and riding horses.

“What about you? Are you from Swansea?” Jessica asked, in a tone that was simultaneously encouraging and respectful, as if she knew that she might encounter a landmine.

He was honest, and said, “Ah, no, I’m originally from up the road. In Merthyr Tydfil.” He searched her face for any sort of recognition of what that meant, that he was carrying around the baggage of a shit childhood and a long line of pisspots, that he didn’t belong in that world anymore, that he’d climbed up out of the muck and made something of himself, that he’d subsequently thrown it all away just to return to the muck, and was only now clawing his way back up to something respectable.

She probably knew nothing about him other than that he worked with Barry, and now, she’d learned he was sober, and he was a blithering idiot who’d complimented her shoes before making polite conversation.

“Oh, interesting. A surfer from Merthyr Tydfil. Do you have family there?”

Ivan nodded shyly, unable to settle his gaze on one part of her face. “My mother, yes.”

“Pets?”

Ivan cocked his head in confusion, half-smiling. “Does my … mother have—”

“No, you. Do you have a pet?” Jessica laughed. Ivan laughed, too, feeling embarrassed.

“Oh, uh, yes. I have an old Lab mix named Bruno. What about you?”

“No dogs, at least at the moment. But I do have three horses.”

“Three!” Ivan was surprised.

“Yes. Boarded at Bevaxe Fach. One of them is too old to jump, but I love him, so … The other two I still use in competitions. Do you ride?”

Ivan grimaced and shook his head. “No, I’ve never.” Truthfully, he was terrified of horses, had never so much as touched one, yet he couldn’t help but be wildly impressed that Jessica was adept with them.

“Kids?” She asked, without inflection, and Ivan wondered if she’d noticed that he’d accidentally flinched when she’d talked about her injury.

“Ah, yes, I have three,” he said, quietly. “My oldest son is 18, then another who is just turned 16. And a daughter, who’s 3 1/2.”

“Oh, wow,” Jessica’s eyes widened. “That’s quite an age span! A toddler and an 18—“

“Different mums,” Ivan explained quickly, trying not to put any weight into the statement while also hoping desperately that she wouldn’t press on. He wasn’t sure how to explain his past without putting her off. Definitely not a first date conversation.

“Ah,” she acknowledged his comment, and let it lie, much to Ivan’s relief. “How long have you been working with Barry?”

“Almost two years now. While I build up my own construction business. Strike out on my own,” he nodded. He wanted to ask her about not having children but thought it too personal.

“Oh, good for you! Barry thinks the world of you. He says he doesn’t know what he’d do without Ivan Locke. Wow—he and Gina have quite a life, don’t they? Have you seen their place in Surrey?” Jessica lowered her voice and leaned in closer to him, as if she were gossiping. He knew she was about to refer to the couple’s ridiculously posh estate, which had been featured in home and garden magazines.

Ivan leaned in, too, pretending like he was having a hard time hearing her, when in reality he was sneakily inhaling her smell. It was good. He was so distracted by sorting through what she smelled like—freshly mown grass? orange blossoms, laundry … warm bread, somehow—that he almost forgot to answer her question.

“I have, yes … been to—” He looked up from her shoes to her lips and finally to her eyes, to find that she was looking at his mouth. Abruptly, he pivoted his reply and instead asked, “Can I kiss you?”

Never in his life had Ivan been a fan of public displays of affection, much less with someone he had business with, much less in a town where he did business. But yet, if he didn’t make physical contact with Jessica immediately, he might never do it.

Jessica got halfway through murmuring, “Yes, please,” before Ivan was eagerly scooting forward in his chair and pressing his lips against hers. After a preliminary mishap of their front teeth clacking together, their mouths fit together wonderfully.

* * *

After an hour of eating and talking and staring at each other on their second dinner date, Jessica surprised Ivan by boldly telling him that she was so attracted to him that she was having a difficult time finishing her meal. Once his brain stopped short-circuiting, and he survived his body’s attempt to blush himself into oblivion, Ivan countered by admitting that he was fighting the urge to lunge across the table and kiss the face off of her.

The game was on, and they had other worked up before he’d even paid the bill by flirtily confessing in very low voices about the fantasies they’d had about each other before they went out to that first lunch. Without the emboldening agent of booze, it took a while before Ivan allowed himself to reluctantly admit that he’d been extremely taken with her shoes and had imagined her wearing them and nothing else. A tame fantasy, especially by Ivan’s former standards, but she seemed to appreciate it.

Jessica giggled knowingly and whispered, “I noticed you looking at my shoes before I’d even really had a good look at you. I liked it. I mean, honestly—I didn’t do years of physical therapy so I could wear ballet flats.”

Under the table, Ivan felt the toe of her shoe nudge the inside of his knee and he deftly snuck a hand down to capture her ankle in his fingers, keeping his expression measured.

“All right. What did you think of me, then?” Ivan asked softly, running the pad of his thumb across the toe of her shoe, and then up the fine bones of her foot, and onto the ridge of her shin.

“I thought …” Jessica shot him a devilish grin and whispered, conspiratorially, “that you looked like a sexy construction worker in a porn movie.”

Ivan, mock scandalized, dropped her foot abruptly and frowned at her, trying to decide if she was teasing him. He teased back, “A what? Do you watch a lot of construction porn, then?”

Quick to move her foot back up to his thigh, Jessica tittered, “What if I do? Anyway, you changed out of your shirt in the other room and I saw your tattoos and I was like—I don’t know! I wanted you.” No one had ever talked to Ivan like that, not ever, and he was rapidly alternating between feeling embarrassed and getting off on it. Jessica was … unexpected. She felt like something that was happening to him. And he liked it.

After the bill was paid, Ivan and Jessica made out in the car park outside the restaurant until the windows fogged over and Ivan was so hard that he couldn’t think properly. His dick overtaking his logic is probably why he let Jessica—Jessie, she suggested—dare him to drive them both to a vacant cliffside property that he hadn’t even completely scheduled yet so they could indulge her fantasy and do it in a construction zone.

Doubt began to creep in, as it became clear to Ivan that a spontaneous tryst was assuredly not going to be his best effort, because although he was into Jessica, he was still very nervous. Breaking into a client’s home, even a vacant one, would risk his professional reputation—which he’d only recently recovered. Also, the thought occurred to him that it _had_ been three years since he’d been with anyone. He wasn’t likely to make a lasting impression, so to speak.

Jessie assured him that she was up for it, if he liked the idea—even if he wasn’t wearing his work boots and a hard hat, nor carrying a sledgehammer while shirtless, like in her fantasies. Disarmed by her candor and entirely smitten with her sense of adventure, Ivan laughed and said that she was absolutely fucking mad as a hatter.

Just before he was about to turn off the car ignition so they could get on with it, Ivan paused. He reconsidered the whole nutty idea. Turning to Jessica, who was putting her shoes on in order to move their heavy petting up to the house, he said to her, seriously, “Wait, Jessica. I don’t want to do it like this. You and ... like this, I mean. I want—I want to make love to you in my bed. My warm bed, at my home. I want to fall asleep with you and I want to wake up with you. Is that OK? Am I ruining it?” He put his hand on her shoulder and looked at her pleadingly. “Will you come?”

As he spoke, Jessica’s expression moved from confusion to relief. When she smiled warmly in the dimness of the dashboard lights, every bit of nervousness in Ivan’s system ebbed away.

“Oh, thank god. I was terrified I was going to have to go through with it. I don’t even know if the loo works,” she exhaled, laughing. “Yes. Please, let’s go to your place.”

“Are you sure?” Ivan asked. “Are you certain it’s not too soon?”

“It’s not,” she replied, her expression open and earnest. “Honestly, the sooner, the better.”

 

Ivan locked his car and the front door, shut Bruno out of the bedroom, and, while Jessica was in his lavatory, lowered the lights in the bedroom. In his element, in the privacy of his home, he felt his body start to relax, even as his mind raced, and the nervousness began to fade away. He breathed deeply, waiting for Jessica. _This is good. This is right._ Hearing the sound of her heels clicking into the bedroom, Ivan looked up as she came into sight. As promised, Jessica was naked, except for those heels. Ivan wasn’t sure he’d ever been so happy in his life. She was a goddess—all smooth legs and swaying hips and flushed nipples and blushing cheeks—and Ivan felt entirely dumbstruck by her.

He remained speechless and passive as Jessica undressed him, carefully urging his jumper over his head, picking his shirt buttons undone, undoing his belt as she shifted even higher onto her toes to kiss him. He moved his hands to her arms and then up to her shoulders as she wiggled his jeans down past his hips.

“Are you cold?” he asked softly, pulling away just slightly from her mouth. Her skin was prickling into goosebumps, so he rubbed at her skin lightly. She immediately shook her head, keeping her eyes on his mouth, and tucked her fingers into the waistband of his boxers. Ivan groaned at the feel of her warm fingers against his stomach and closed his mouth over hers. He was lightheaded, dizzy with want for her, but calm.

If there weren’t able to take dating as slow as they might’ve, Ivan did his best to at least take his time with this bit. Pulling her onto his lap while he sat on the bed, Jessica straddled his thighs and toyed with his necklaces while they kissed with open lips and curling tongues. When she pulled her mouth away, Ivan watched her in open-mouthed wonder as she looked at the pendants in her fingers before moving to trace the ink on his shoulder. She was studying him as he studied her. He hooked his hands around the blades of her hips and pulled her closer so he could move his hands to fully cup her bottom, kneading at the soft flesh there. He splayed his fingers wide enough that the tip of his ring finger dipped between her legs. When Ivan felt how wet she was for him already, a wave of headiness washed over him and he groaned happily, looking up at her.

Jessica smiled at him, her eyes half-lidded in pleasure, and shifted on his lap until her knees were on the bed and her shoes were pressing into the outer muscles of Ivan’s thighs. She put her hands against his chest and pressed him back until he was laying back on the bed, his feet still on the floor. Breathlessly, he gripped her bent knees and watched as she took his stiff cock in her hands, urging it to get even harder. It felt like bliss and Ivan let his head fall back against the mattress.

“Is this okay?” Jessica asked, gently stroking his shaft and rounding a cupped palm over the head.

“God, yes,” Ivan murmured. “Yes, Jessica. It's very good.”

By the time she shifted to fit herself onto him and lowered her chest to rest against his, Ivan was almost beside himself. He held Jessica close as he pressed up and into her, finding her lips with his. Being inside Jessica felt natural, easy—like coming home, whatever that meant. All that time he’d spent alone, working and driving and surfing and going to meetings and navigating his relationships with Kat and Bethan and his mother, he never once thought he’d find something like this. Deserve something like _this_. It was his own voice that said in his mind, _You know what this is._

He did, and he was ready for it. Now he just had to figure out how to make love last.

* * *

Eighteen months later—a full five years after Ivan had, he thought, irrevocably and completely cocked his life up by leaving Birmingham for London—he was surprised to wake up one morning and discover that he hadn’t. Everything really was OK. Locke Construction was more or less solvent. His equity from partnering with Barry had paid off nicely. Sean, 20, and Eddie, 18, were both at university, and little Rosie was 5 and occasionally allowed to spend the night in Mumbles with Ivan. His own health was good, his mental health stable, he hadn’t had a drink in four and a half years, and he had someone to love, who loved him back.

Monday night was date night, at Jessica’s insistence. She needed somewhere to wear her shoe collection and Ivan was happy to oblige her. Tuesday and Thursday nights, they stayed in, at his insistence. Wednesday was his weekly dinner with his sponsor. Fridays became more flexible as the children got older, but Ivan still found himself driving to London and Birmingham almost every weekend.

Jessica moved into his Mumbles cottage six months after they met, as soon as Ivan’s team began to renovate her home. After a year of cohabitation (to make sure they still liked each other), the plan formed: Once Jessie’s reno was complete and she had a chance to sell it, they’d move into a larger place together, one with a barn so she could keep her horses, and plenty of spare bedrooms for the kids when they visited.

Most mornings, including the morning he woke up with the realization that everything was okay, he couldn’t believe that he, Ivan Locke, had pulled it off and actually set things to rights.

“Come here,” Ivan grumbled into the silky hair at the top of Jessie’s crown. She murmured sleepily in reply as he gently pulled her on top of him, the full weight of her on his body. When she was more or less situated, he combed her long hair away from her mouth so he could kiss her.

“You’re a miracle—do you know that?” Ivan whispered to her. “A _miracle_.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Ivan Locke: Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16762378) by [TheAstronomer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAstronomer/pseuds/TheAstronomer)




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